I’m back in Ourosogui after a nice weekend trip to Saint Louis. It was great timing for the trip, because I was just coming out of my weird awkward funk and Saint Louis just shoved me out of it even more. During my time in Saint Louis, Kate and I went to her office, which is my future office and did our meet and greet. It was such an eye opening experience of the next year of my life. I remember when I demysted with my ancienne in Aram and afterwards all I thought was “wow this is the next 2 years of my life, I love it!” during the time of my demyst the women in Aram were burning really intoxicating incense (a specific grass) . The village vibe felt like open arms embracing me. The vibe in Saint Louis didn’t necessarily feel like a warm embrace from the others, but it definitely felt like I was giving this opportunity a warm embrace. I’m really excited to start this position, and begin working with the Talibes. I know I’ve got a lot to prepare for this (oh like learn Wolof and French), thankfully the Talibes speak Pulaar so I’m already golden in that department. They might end up being the only people I end up communicating with during my time… kidding! Also, I don’t know if this is already known to those who read this blog but I’m extending my 2 year peace corps service for another year. Meaning I’m once again changing my work here to another area (physically and work wise). I’ll be working at an NGO in Saint Louis called Clare Enfance, taking over a 3rd year volunteer Kate. Kate is on her way out of Senegal right now, but I won’t be moving to Saint Louis until April/May – I believe I’ll be moving my stuff to Saint Louis frequently over the next few months, but I won’t actually start my work until I return from America. That way I will be in the complete swing of things. I’m still in Ourosogui and today while riding around the town I just thought to myself how much I enjoy Ourosogui, it took me a few weeks to feel really comfortable in Ourosogui, and what I was doing here but I’m definitely over that. Towns are hard for volunteers, there isn’t a close sense of community like there was in my village. I definitely walk these streets alone, it doesn’t have to be that way – but it is, whether that’s because of me or being a town I’m not positive. In village though I never ended up walking the paths alone, children walked with me or I would just stop at every compound and greet people along the way. It’s not like that here, people are going about their own way as well, don’t get me wrong I definitely greet people along the way but I think I just won’t necessarily feel like I’m an Ourosoguian – I will consider myself an Aram-ian. I think this will definitely continue into Saint Louis. I feel for volunteers in larger towns during their whole service, it is much more difficult connecting with the town and being able to walk the streets and truly feeling like people take ownership over you, Aram protected me. Ourosogui is unsure about me, but also, Ourosogui gives me a bit more of a sense of independence, which is nice. I can go to boutiques and buy whatever I want and people don’t comment on it through the village, I can be anonymous on the streets – not much but more so. Towns are just harder for integration, this isn't true for everybody of course I'm just generalizing. Cities must be much more difficult.

I'll hopefully be returning to Aram to visit sometime this month. I'm nervous to return because I don't want people to be mean about me moving, but I'm soooo excited to see the kids again. God, I miss them so much! The kids in the household were always so good to me, I miss the people in the village, and my host mom! It's going to be a really good return, I think I just have a hard time thinking I need to meet people's expectations of my return. Anyways, I'm going to keep this short.

Kate have a safe return to the states, and your going away party was spectacular.

Saint Louis, I think I'm ready for you.Ourosogui, this has been an intense learning experience in such a short period.Aram, you will always be my true love.

It’s been such a long time since I last posted a blog and I have so much to say. I’m going to do each event right, by giving them their own posting and write a decent amount for each. I’m going to start with the Epic Bike Trip Steve and I took. Steve and I are probably about equal amounts crazy and decided to take a bike trip around Senegal, we didn’t know where we were going or how long it was going to take but our end date was already schedule for December 31st so we could welcome the New Year with friends. Our goal was to end at a regional house the 31st, in which case we could get a car January 1st to get back to our sites and finish whatever work we needed complete before All Vol, WAIST, and COS conference. We started once Steve got approved to leave the Medical Hut after he got his wisdom teeth removed. Steve made the trip up to Ourosogui for us to pack up our supplies for the trip, we thought we’d start in Bakel and take the bush path down to Khossanto but…because we are the people we are we decided to start in Ourosogui instead because our bags were already strapped on to our bikes. So Wednesday December 14th was our first day of biking. We made to it to Wendou Bosseabe, probably about 55k south east of Ourosogui. This was a larger town along the road and we found the village chief and asked if we could spend the night there, he let us sleep at his house and he feed us! He was the kindest man!! When I told him we had our own food, and sleeping stuff, he told me “I know you have all these things you guys are going on a bike trip, but when you come to my house I will give you food and a room. You save your stuff for later.” His house was beautiful, and we got treated like kings and queens. The next day we made our way to Bakel, it was getting late and we wanted to push through because our friends were going to be there until the next morning and we wanted some familiar faces. Surprisingly enough my work’s car passed by us on the road and I recognized the bright red hat Kayta always wears so I started waving of course. He pulled over and we stood around talking and he insisted on giving us a ride to Bakel so we would get there before dark. We accepted the ride, obviously the smart thing to do, but deep down it was killing both of us. So we got a ride for the last 30k to Bakel, arrived in Bakel and were greeted by our lovely friends. Hung out in Bakel that night, and in the morning we went exploring around the town. Bakel is truly a beautiful town, I insist everyone visit it if they’re in the area – not likely you would be in the area unless you’re going to Mali, but it really is a mixture of cultures, ethnicities, and languages. Great town! From Bakel we headed towards our bush path, not really knowing where it was but once we arrived in Kidira we started asking around, and thankfully a boutique owner Cherno was the kindest man and gave us a complete list of places to ask for while we’re on the path. There was also a little boy named Sileymanne he was a Talibe from Tamba, and he made my heart so warm, I wish I could have kept him. I kept trying to give him alms and he just refused it all, he just wanted to hang out with me and he kept telling me I was a good person. I did nothing but give this kid the time of day. Breaks your heart doesn’t it. From Kidira we found the bush path towards the village Naye, from there the real journey began. This was my favorite part of the trip we were out in the middle of nowhere, we had no clue where the next town was or how many kilometers we’d be doing per day, we had to rely on the kindness and knowledge of those around us. The scenery was beautiful, we saw it changing right before our eyes, every stop was something new. The path was intense, it was like real mountain biking, uphill, downhill, scary paths full of rocks, sand, gravel, biting flies. Baboons crossing the path then barking at us in the distance. The hardest part about this part of the journey is that we didn’t have enough food, we didn’t realize these villages didn’t have ANYTHING out there, there was no fruit, their boutiques had biscuits, and MSG packets, literally nothing! We couldn’t even get café touba!! Not only that but some people hadn’t even heard of café touba!

Our goal was to arrive at Khossanto, well not so much our “goal” I guess our destination at the beginning. Once we passed Khossanto and headed to Kedougou, we had a day of rest in Kedougou. The day of rest was much needed after our 100+km bike ride of the day. Once we arrived in Kedougou, we didn't know what our next destination was. From Kedougou we went to Salimata, saw the castle that a French man is building there. We had so many options of different routes to take, but people kept telling us we weren't going to be able to make it to any of our options. Apparently there are rules about crossing through the park, and people said we weren't going to be able to make it. From Salimata we entered Guinea, that’s where we spent Christmas Eve, and Christmas day; well the morning of Christmas, the evening of Christmas was spent back in Senegal. From where we crossed back into Senegal we headed towards The Gambia, we biked through there for a few days until we reached Farafenni, in which point we crossed back into Senegal again and headed to Kaolack- that was another 100+km, and we finally arrived there! That was the day before our last day, leading us into our last day was heavy winds, sore bodies, and a short bike ride to near town only 41km away, Fatick. Once we arrived in Fatick we got a car and went to a friend’s site, where we finally sat and relaxed- just to get another car to a nearby city, Mbour, where we went liqeour tasting at Liqeour de Warang. Delicious! If anyone stops by there make sure you get the banana chocolate crème liqeour. Yum!! So this is a fast forward version of the bike trip. I think it was too amazing to write, it's always much easier to talk about. Let's just say it wasn't necessarily life changing, but there was definitely a lot of growth. :) Favorite moments from the bike trip: Kid’s saying TOOOUU bak (as if they were making bird noises), kid’s saying TWO BA BOO (like 2 baboons), in Hamedallay instead of saying “naam” when someone calls your name they made bird noises, Coumba in Bankubaa with her amazing facial scarring and for buying us bread in the morning, the baboons, trying to pee off the side of the road but being too scared because I saw a snake, the amazingly fast transition into English once you get to The Gambia’s border, camping at camping spot, cooking at camping spot, waking up while camping in Gambia because a cow came to our camp site, convincing people I was Pulaar and married an American, after paying the Guinean border control “all of our money” we bought ourselves Christmas presents with the money we hid, speaking Pulaar with people, having a man ask me for money after he collided his bicycle right into me, the house structures in Guinea, the mountains in Guinea, the scenery everywhere we were, exploring the fort in Bakel, passing by the mining villages, spending the night with complete strangers, the confusion of where we were staying in Lemonkoto Gambia, the breakfast place in Basse Gambia, hearing the song “I see you baby shaking that ass” in the beginning of the bike trip and singing it for the rest of the trip, the path of doom – dug out in the middle of the path and you had to steer downhill really well or else you’d eat so much shit!, the second path of doom – rocky road we couldn’t find a clear path and we were getting attacked by biting flies for way too long!

This trip was absolutely amazing, I couldn’t have asked for a better bike partner, or vacation. I’ve posted some pictures on my facebook account, and my picasa site. There are also day by day video journals, not all have been posted but watch the ones that are!

epic bike trip gets pushed back a few days. steve's wisdom teeth surgery went well and his stitches were taken out on Monday. he then started his journey up to Ouro Sogui monday evening, since then he has been on the road. it is now Tuesday 3:18pm and he has not arrived in Ouro Sogui yet. darn you senegal! but tomorrow, inchallah, we will wake up early get a car to Bakel and begin our bike trip. where we are going is a mystery, but i couldn't ask for a better vacation. best friend, 2 wheels, senegal.

the journey begins.... (inchallah)

expected end date: January 1st.

once steve arrives we will gorge ourselves on cereal, while watching plenty of episodes of Long Way Round. Hello Ewan!

notice my twitter roll on the right hand side of my page; i'll post my whereabouts through my twitter account. this way i can text in updates when cell phone service is available.

Aram's Health Hut is not quite open yet but the village is rocking with some health calls. Sarah and Madeline came to Aram and we painted 4 beautiful murals, one is to the left. Reading: Breastfeed only until 6 months.

I'm the guilty one for the running paint below the picture.

To the right is our ASC (head health hut nurse) checking people's tickets during the bed net distribution. It went much smoother than we thought, especially after I had a bit of a rant to create some order-- it worked! It was beautiful once things got flowing and the ASC did an AMAZING job of explaining to people the process of the bed net distribution, how to care for your bed nets and if people were rude to him, he had back up. We made a good team. The day after the bed net distribution, the President of the NGO Net Works came to Madina Ndiathbe, she was going on tourney to check out various distributions. It was pleasant meeting her, and the ICP in Madina really went all out for her arrival.

After the Net Works President left, I retired back to Amber's house, exhausted, and in need of some quiet time before I had to go get on a bus to take me to Dakar for my meeting Saturday afternoon. I made it into Dakar at 7am with little sleep, and got to hang out with good people! Went to my meeting Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, just to leave to go back up North Sunday afternoon. It was a fast trip, not much relaxing but it feels nice being busy again.

I need to get better at updating this blog. What am I saying? I’ve only got a few more months here, and I doubt there is going to be much to write each month. Things have been really slow lately. The villagers are going to the fields, school hasn’t started yet, it’s summer vacation – I guess I feel as if I’m on summer vacation as well, but it’s not much of a vacation. I’ve still been working on the Health Hut, it’s been an incredibly slow process, we’ve been waiting to receive the medication we ordered from the medical dispensary, but they never have all the medication we need at once so it comes to us slowly, slowly. Sarah Keyes, and Madeline Tiee came to Aram and helped me paint some murals. They were so helpful! I’m a horrible artist and thankfully they really took charge and I just had to paint inbetween the lines of their drawings. I really enjoyed it, and I’m so appreciative for their help. We busted out 4 beautiful murals in one day!! That’s a lot of hard work, and amazing team work. It wasn’t even messy, which is surprising when I’m involved with paint. So, the breaking news about my service. I have a few months left as I’m sure you’re all aware of. I’ll be moving sites soon. I do not know when exactly, but my time spent in Aram will be coming to an end. And I’ll be moving to a large city in the Matam Region, Ourissogui. They're currently looking for housing for me to move to in Ourissogui and then I'll be telling my host family and my village about the move. When I move to Ourisoggui I'll be working with a new NGO out there called Yaajeende. I'll be working with them to create new interventions with the various branches, nutrition, husbandry, and agriculture. I'll also be coordinating them with Peace Corps Volunteers in the area. This is a new position so it's going to be developing the position while I'm there. I'm really excited for this position, and fresh start. I'm sad to be leaving my village, and host family, including all my close friends in the village. It's going to be hard, but after many months of debate and endless conversations with other peace corps volunteers I know this is the right decision for me. I'll be able to come back to my village and visit them frequently. It's scary, new, and exciting. And of course I've got a lot of feelings about this move, but that's neither here nor there.We recently had new peace corps trainees come up north to view their future sites, they're still in training but part of their training is for them to meet who they're replacing or get a tour of their future site. After their visit they go back to Thies and finish their training. We're getting 3, that's right 3!!! new volunteers. It's so exciting! The North is such a large region it's hard to spread out all the new volunteers through the whole north, but Podor Department is getting 3 new AGRICULTURE volunteers. It's rare that we get agriculture volunteers as well. It's so exciting, and the 3 new volunteers are sooo cool! We got the pleasure of hanging out with them before they had to go back to Thies, they seem like a great bunch of enthusiastic volunteers. So I hope they enjoy the North. It's sad I'm leaving when they get up here, I'll just be moving to the west, but it's pretty far out west. I hope I'll still be able to get to know the new volunteers and help support them however need be. I'm just really excited to get some agriculture volunteers up north! I was lucky enough to take one of the new volunteers to her site, and introduce her to her future home; the people in her village were so kind! It's a new site, so they've never had a volunteer before and the people there were just so kind. I really hope it works out for her, and I think it will. She seems like the type of volunteer with the right mind set when going in to this. I feel as if sometimes volunteers (including myself!) forget that nobody said Peace Corps was going to be easy. It's not suppose to be easy, and it's hard to remember that when everything else seems so difficult.

shout out to megan and my mother. the packages were the greatest thing to come home to!

thank u!

GIRLS CAMP

I can now say I successfully survived Girls Camp (barely)! The Podor Department held a large Girls Camp 6 days, 29 girls. Each volunteer brought 4 girls from their village or a nearby village, in addition to the 4 girls Jonno also brought 6 older girls who had all won the Michele Sylvester Scholarship last year. The Michele Sylvester Scholarship is a scholarship program we can do for girls in college who don’t have the means for school supplies, but also have the grades to place them in the top of the class. The scholarship grants girls money to purchase school supplies, as well as being a positive affirmation for their hard work in school. The 6 scholarship girls were much older than the other participants and had a role during the girls camp, Junior Camp Counselors. These 6 girls really saved our girls camp, they were great role models for the younger participants, courageous, intelligent, kind, and incredibly helpful. I’m really going to miss those girls, I don’t know how our girls camp would have worked without their help.

A great part of our girls camp was the interactions the girls were having with various girls from other villages/towns, they were making friends in other areas hopefully really opening their eyes from the small lenses they hold because they never get to see outside of their villages. It was great all these girls got to see Ndioum, and experience Ndioum a little bit. We didn’t get them leave the premise much for fear of what may happen to them. All the volunteers were very strict mothers/fathers; we were just protective.

Our girls camp consisted of topics such as: Environment, Life Skills, Culture, Hygiene, Health, Art, Guest Speakers. Activities included: tree nursery, nutrition, environmental changes, role models, short term/long term goals, self esteem building, dance, food, sports, hand washing, brushing teeth, neem crème, hair conditioner, HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted viruses, tye dye, pottery. Guest speakers included, a middle school teacher who discussed people’s human right to an education, the president of a woman’s group that covers over 40+ villages/towns, female midwife. These girls got a look into so many activities they would never be able to take part of without an outside influence, and they loved every moment of it. It was really a great experience for them and for us, equally enjoyed. The guest speakers were a great touch, having a local talk to these girls to reinforce the message we’re trying to drill home had a much stronger impact than any volunteer would have on the girls.

Each day was well packed with sessions, but after dinner we got to watch movies. The girls loved Bend it Like Beckham, that film was such a great hit! They loved the soccer aspect, the girl being able to play better than the guys, and there was a lot they could relate to. We also watched Planet Earth, I don’t know if the girls understood that Planet Earth was real, but they were glued to the screen from the beautiful imagery.

Sometimes there was bullying, fighting, hitting, insults, just as expected, but honestly the girls really got a long. They had a taste of freedom and went a little wild—but they were such great girls I really miss them all, even during their wild times.

 

MALARIA

The last day for our girls camp was Saturday, we had a large party, parents came and the girls presented what they did during girls camp and had a few pieces of work that they had to present to the parents. It was a grand time, great food, boissons, show and tell, etc. Well, the day before the party (Friday) I developed a fever and it wasn’t getting any better. Saturday I didn’t move from my position all day, I just laid on a mattress with a fever and feeling ill. I couldn’t even present my girls with their certificates.

Team Podor decided to all hang out at the regional house to rest up and relax from Girls Camp, we all hung out together watching movies, people were making meals together, there was so much love in the air, which is surprising seeing as we all just spent 6 days together doing a large chaotic project. Thank god all of Team Podor was at the regional house, because it was going to take a team of volunteers to assist in my recovery--

My fever continued until Sunday – getting up to about 105 degrees Fahrenheit. I contacted medical staff telling them my ears were hurting and I couldn’t hear again thinking my ears were clogged, then I also dropped hint that I had a fever- they assumed maybe it was an ear infection, but I knew it didn’t feel like one- it wasn’t painful I just couldn’t hear. SO somehow I started telling them about all my symptoms based around the fever, and it was decided I needed to take a malaria test. I took one but we were going to need to send the slides to Dakar for them to send to a lab. Later on that night Team Podor gave me a rapid malaria test, they didn’t tell me the results or maybe they did, I fell asleep right after they pricked my fingers for blood. They woke me up later to give me medication, then briefly told me I had malaria, but remember I still couldn’t hear, and was in and out of sleep so to me all I heard was the words you malaria – thinking it was negative because who gets malaria right?! The next morning I got into our volunteer support’s peace corps issued vehicle and he drove me to Dakar, I texted Sarah asking her why I was going to Dakar and that’s when I found out for sure I had malaria. Medical staff was waiting for me. I walked in and they tried to draw some blood – didn’t work, they attempted over 10 times to draw blood until deciding they were going to call a specialist my veins were not rising and any glimpse of a vein turned to be false. A staff member from the lab arrived and they pulled me out of bed, he was able to draw blood and take the blood directly to the lab. Later that day I got my test results, they were shocking to me – and honestly, they were probably much worse but thankfully I had already started taking the medication. I’ve been in Dakar since Monday July 18th, and will be here until about Friday July 29th, works pretty well because I have a SeneGAD meeting on Saturday In Thies. I’m feeling much better, but I have no stamina, they say that because I didn’t start treatment until a few days after the malaria hit I’ll take a while longer to completely heal. The malaria is out of my system, and my red blood cells have doubled making them slightly below average, but better than before.

Let’s just say Team Podor, thanks for saving me.

Malaria sux.

I arrived in Thailand, not willing to look back on all the obstacles I faced attempting to get there, and was in complete shock from this country. I had my own idea of “Thailand”, and the thing about Thailand is – wow. It constantly amazed me, every town I went to, the people I met, the experiences I had, blah blah blah. So I arrived in Bangkok, completely overwhelmed by the large city and knew I had to get out as soon as possible to start my adventures. After Bangkok I went to Chiang Mai, enjoyed the smaller town atmosphere, went to Patara Elephant Farm – absolutely amazing! One of the best experiences I’ve ever had, I got to take care of an elephant all day, checking to make sure she was healthy, bathing her, then we got to go on a walk to the waterfalls- she walked I sat on her neck. Her name was Nuwii. Who is now tattoo’d on my arm! If you look through the pics there’s a picture of me riding Nuwii, that’s the one on my arm- obviously without me on her. I got the tattoo done by bamboo, which is just a bamboo rod with 3 tiny needles and the tattoo artist just taps it in your skin constantly. Not that painful, just a strange pain… my arm never went numb and I felt the constant pricks, but it wasn’t painful it was just a shock of “Oh yup, can still feel it.” The tattoo artist was absolutely amazing, such a talented human being. He also does machine tattoo, giving himself a range of artistic knowledge. So after Chiang Mai I made my way to Pai, where I got the tattoo done. I fell in love with Pai, the hard part was towards the end I was getting antsy feet, I needed to move again before coming back to Senegal. I was in such a state of comfort and relaxation which would have made the transition back to Senegal much more difficult. I ended up staying in Pai tho, it’s hard to leave Pai. After Pai I returned to Bangkok to get prepared for my fly out and back to Senegal. Once again at the airport I ran into various obstacles, but I made it back to Senegal and was greeted by Steve! Which was a great way to return to Senegal! I

This is the shortest story about my travels, but it was my travels; I don’t need to share it all. It was greatly needed, and completely worth it. I absolutely love Thailand, and I would definitely return.

Also, I never felt like I was in any sort of danger when traveling on my own. I met some amazing people, and enjoyed hearing their stories of their travels, I hope to stay in contact with many travelers, and hopefully I run into others somewhere else in the world.

So, Senegal has been different for me. I don’t know if it’s because of my recent travels or if it’s because I’ve hit the year mark, but I just feel so much more comfortable in this country. I feel like I know what to expect and what I can get away with, also, I don’t have to please everybody. I don’t have to take things personal, if my work isn’t working out maybe it’s not me, maybe it’s the people- so be it. I’m just finding my place, and it feels like I’ve gained control again. It’s a nice feeling.

Now I’m attempting to plan a trip with Huda, inchallah. I really want to meet up with her, plane tickets might be an issue, but I think I might be meeting up with Huda in Morocco or Spain come October. Then in December I have a bike trip! What what! Super excited for the bike trip (not like I’m not excited to see Huda) the bike trip is going to be emotional and physically draining, it’s going to be difficult. I love pushing myself to endure something so difficult, because the truth is- we can all handle it, we’re just too scared to push ourselves. Also I haven’t been training and I’m having difficulty fixing my flat tire lately, the patches wont stick! The first day of biking will be my first day of training! 

Loves and hugs.

xox

Thailand, here I come!

I leave in 2 days to go to Thailand, I'm so excited. I'm really looking forward for some vacation time. I already feel like once I come back I'm going to have so much to do but it's nice being in Dakar right now so I can get as much done as possible, being at the office takes me back to working in the library during uni- I haven't been this studious since uni. It's a bizarre change in work atmosphere.

So the girls camp is coming along we're in the process of applying for the grant, and we've got everything planned. Of course there are the loose ends, but it's pretty far from now so it'll happen when it needs to. I've been trying to push the completion of all the loose ends to as soon as possible so we can perfect everything else, but it's not gonna happen, it's a good thing I'm totally able to turn work off when I'm in vacation mode. As I like to tell my Pulaars, my hands are clean. That sounds horrible, but I'm going on vaca, and the other volunteers I'm working with are completely capable of handling everything else, I'm just motherly over my work and feel guilty when I transfer what I consider my work to someone else.

blah blah blah...

I did a training session with the new volunteers, well I did one about behavior change, that was alright. I did another one for SeneGAD activities, I wish I would have more time so I could have done an activity with the newbies, but I think it went all right. It was my first time so I'm not going to be too harsh about it, next time will be better :). I've been hanging out at the office getting some stuff accomplished for SeneGAD, I'm excited to come back to country and be more energized for work. I feel like right now I'm mentally in Thailand.

I don't really have much planned for Thailand, I know I will be going to an elephant sanctuary May 19th, called Patara Elephant Farm; check it out. I'm really pumped for this, the elephant farm is in Chiang Mai. My plans so far are, arrive in Bangkok, hang out there for a day or so, go up north to Chiang Mai hang out there til whenever, go to Chiang Rai hang out there til whenever, go to Pai same... then make sure I get back to Bangkok in time. I've got a blue print schedule, mainly just so I know when I have to get back to Bangkok, because I'm anal about being on time to airports. Other than that I don't have anything planned. I know I want to do some thai cooking classes, rafting, hiking, water falls, sight seeing, etc. there is so much to do i wont have a bored moment. Suggestions?

That's my short update. loves.

*p.s. if you want to send me a package go right ahead the issue with the postal office is solved. If you're worried if I wont be able to pick it up in time (I have 3 weeks to pick up packages and i have horrible timing.) So to be safe, write PCV Hadiel Mohamed AND Amber Robinson, this will allow Amber to pick up my packages as well and save them for me 'til I return. thanks for the love in a box y'all.

Thailand, here I come!

I leave in 2 days to go to Thailand, I'm so excited. I'm really looking forward for some vacation time. I already feel like once I come back I'm going to have so much to do but it's nice being in Dakar right now so I can get as much done as possible, being at the office takes me back to working in the library during uni- I haven't been this studious since uni. It's a bizarre change in work atmosphere.

So the girls camp is coming along we're in the process of applying for the grant, and we've got everything planned. Of course there are the loose ends, but it's pretty far from now so it'll happen when it needs to. I've been trying to push the completion of all the loose ends to as soon as possible so we can perfect everything else, but it's not gonna happen, it's a good thing I'm totally able to turn work off when I'm in vacation mode. As I like to tell my Pulaars, my hands are clean. That sounds horrible, but I'm going on vaca, and the other volunteers I'm working with are completely capable of handling everything else, I'm just motherly over my work and feel guilty when I transfer what I consider my work to someone else.

blah blah blah...

I did a training session with the new volunteers, well I did one about behavior change, that was alright. I did another one for SeneGAD activities, I wish I would have more time so I could have done an activity with the newbies, but I think it went all right. It was my first time so I'm not going to be too harsh about it, next time will be better :). I've been hanging out at the office getting some stuff accomplished for SeneGAD, I'm excited to come back to country and be more energized for work. I feel like right now I'm mentally in Thailand.

I don't really have much planned for Thailand, I know I will be going to an elephant sanctuary May 19th, called Patora Elephant Farm; check it out. I'm really pumped for this, the elephant farm is in Chiang Mai. My plans so far are, arrive in Bangkok, hang out there for a day or so, go up north to Chiang Mai hang out there til whenever, go to Chiang Rai hang out there til whenever, go to Pai same... then make sure I get back to Bangkok in time. I've got a blue print schedule, mainly just so I know when I have to get back to Bangkok, because I'm anal about being on time to airports. Other than that I don't have anything planned. I know I want to do some thai cooking classes, rafting, hiking, water falls, sight seeing, etc. there is so much to do i wont have a bored moment. Suggestions?

That's my short update. loves.

The gift that carries on.

I’m sitting in Medina Ndiatbe, the home to my nearest fluent English speaking physical human being, the home to my nearest electricity source, the home to the nearest soda selling boutiques, the home to the nearest crème glace, the home to the nearest market with variety, the home to the nearest fan, the home to full cell phone reseau. The home to where Hadiel has been working on various work related projects all day. I come here, hang out with Amber, get work done, drink cold water, eat tons of crème glace, eat more crème glace, charge my electronics so I can “last” at site until my next trip to Ndioum (don’t judge me. It’s hard sleeping at night with no music. It’s hard remembering your p90x work outs with no mp3 player, it’s hard going for runs hearing nothing but the water slush around your camel pack, it’s hard getting work done when your computer is dead, it’s hard knowing when you’re supposed to be in Thies for trainings in a week because people contact you via email, it’s hard knowing you have a report due in a week which was also sent to you via email, it’s hard not being able to take pictures of your awesome climb up the water tower, it’s hard not having 2 full cell phone batteries when you’re provided with free volunteer-to-volunteer calling, I need my daily Steve updates.)

The updates on my site: Mamadou (my boss) recently came to my site, after I sent him a heartfelt email/cry for help. I don’t have any counterparts at my site, and I thought I could do things on my own, but there was a lack of sustainability to everything I was attempting. The meeting went really well, and I’m really appreciative Mamadou came out to hold this meeting. The people who attended the meeting all made the comment that I had told them about my concern already, and that they realized they never took it serious or did anything about it, it was reassuring hearing that these people listen to me, and that they realize I’ve already attempted to handle things myself and that I had to call for back up. It’s horrible that back up was needed, but it’s great that Peace Corps provided it for me. I got new counterparts, and people in the village are taking on a new sense of responsibility for my work. I can tell people are more serious about the projects I want to do and that they’re more excited about it. It doesn’t hurt that a recent documentary about Peace Corps role in Senegal has been on the local Senegalese channels lately, for those people who have televisions or have been able to hear about the documentary they seem to have a greater knowledge about Peace Corps work. The disc jockey of a nearby radio station Cas Cas was at the meeting (he had a meeting a few hours before us about the new community rural representatives from Aram), it was a good thing he was a part of my meeting as well because he supported me in my concern, he made the comment of the village having a volunteer and their lack of utilizing the volunteer for what they’re worth, suggesting I go to his village instead. The disc jockey recorded Mamadou after the meeting about Peace Corps work, and about the meeting, etc. He also assigned me to work with the new community rural representatives, the new group is for the development of Aram; I met the newly assigned position holders and we scheduled a meeting for the following Friday. The greatest thing about these new position holders is they’re young, a mean older than me but they’re not old men, which was a huge complaint on my part. My village father is a great man, and can get anything done for me that I need, but he’s old and that makes it hard to work with him. I need someone young who can get up and walk with me to the school whenever the teachers need a talking to, or help building a fence, or help distributing trees. Instead I tend to use young children for some tasks, which isn’t any better because things get out of control. It’s nice that my language skills are getting better and I’m learning from my lessons. I’m making notes about what I need to do in order to make my work go better, it would have been better if this had happened in the beginning but it’s never too late.

Podor Department volunteers and myself are working on a Girls Leadership Camp come July 10th, the camp will continue until July 16th. We will be holding the camp at the Ndioum Tostan house. The obviously for female students only, grade levels 5th and 6th, but the greatest part; ever year volunteers can hold a scholarship contest with middle school girls who are going on to high school, well thankfully Jonno conducted the scholarship contest (not really a contest, everyone wins) and we’ll be using his scholarship girls from last year to be junior camp counselors. They’ll have various responsibilities, hold sessions, be role models, and get hands on experience of what it’s like actually being in a leadership position. This is going to be incredibly exciting, and all the volunteers are really dedicated for this to be as much fun as possible! We’ll have various sessions including arts and crafts, cross culture, environmental lessons, sexual health, leadership roles, assertive communication, short term and long term goals, career panel, and lastly a graduation ceremony; a household representative (hopefully a father) will attend this ceremony and a gender and development instructor will hold a meeting with the fathers about the challenges the girls face in their lives to continue their education, and why it’s important for the fathers to support their daughters education. The girls will then present their career goals to their fathers and how the girls will obtain these goals. Then diplomas will be handed out, pictures will be taken, drinks will be drunk (not alcoholic! Bissap rekk), hands will be shaken. And all the volunteers will walk away realizing that was the greatest part of our service. (Yes, I’m already making that claim and it hasn’t even happened yet) YAY Girls’ Education!!

Speaking of education, why don’t you guys want the people in Aram to read books? Literacy is an incredibly important issue, give me your money. Go to the peace corps partnership website and donate money. I’ll post the link once I get to Ndioum. I don’t have much time on the internet, I’m using this awesome thumbdrive where you buy phone credit and put it on the SIM Card inside the thumbdrive and you can get internet anywhere – but probably not my site, I’ve never tried I’m just assuming.

Right now the students are all on vacation, until next Monday. While students are on vacation they return to their home villages, so a lot of students have returned to Aram seeing as we only have a Primary school, all the other students have to live in other villages to go to middle-high school. So a lot of fun people are back in my site, and it’s been exciting. One student has been “tutoring” me as I’ve been tutoring him in English. These tutor sessions have only happened 3 times, and what happens is, he yells at me that I don’t understand anything. He’s actually really mean, at first I thought this would be really encouraging and push me to want to learn, NOPE! I’m a baby and need to be pampered with my learning. He even told me I didn’t know English, say what?! He’s a cool dude, I’m just a learner who needs to be constantly reminded that I’m amazing. Hahaha at least I can admit it.

So site is amazing like always, I got to climb the water tower which was really scary because I’m terrified of heights but it was sooo fun! I got to take some pictures but then my camera died. I made the man whose in charge of the water tower, who also climbed up with me (there’s a ladder you guys, this wasn’t any hard core climbing) I made me scream with me off the top of the water tower. If you climb that high, you’ve got to scream with all your might. It was amazing! So much fun, he just laughed and once again like everyone always says “I swear Penda” (Penda is my local name). I don’t know exactly what they’re all swearing about me, but I hope it’s my witty comments, and my secret charm; it’s probably the fact that all I do is laugh. I think they’re hilarious, and I think I’m hilarious (duh). P.S. Every time I try to say “I’m funny” in Pulaar, people don’t understand me because I can’t pronounce the word that well- which ultimately makes me laugh even harder; making me want to be able to tell people how stinkin’ funny I am!

Well that’s my update for now.

Huda I hope you got my package… that I sent you…. From Africa!

Check out the International Art Exchange pictures on my Picasa album.

Check out my Ag Seminar pictures.

Donate money to get my students some books!

Hot season is here! NOOO!! Summer has arrived, it’s not even that bad and yet I’m already being a baby about the intense heat. Waking up to find yourself in a pool of your own sweat, thinking to yourself… when will my body stop sweating so my body can be dry for over an hour. Sometimes when talking to the Senegalese people in my village as I’m drenched in sweat and yet you only see one single drop of sweat on their face. I don’t understand it. Well even though hot season brings some horrible things, such as the heat, increase of flies, dehydration, grogginess, laziness, it brings one of the greatest things too: MANGOES! Allowing my favorite past time activity, naked mango time. This might be too much to share via blog, let’s just say it gets really hot during hot season, and mangoes are really messy.

Work updates: I recently held an agricultural training of trainers seminar in my village which went really well! I really enjoyed having the seminar, and yes it was the first time I’ve had a seminar so others can definitely learn from my mistakes, and I learned from my mistakes as well. It seems everyone who attended really enjoyed the seminar, and I even had some PCVs come help out too. Youssoupha a PC trainer came to train the participants, he covered tons of topics including zai holes, mulching, double digging, companion planting, compost, proper tree care, pesticides, proper watering techniques when using water pumps, etc. It was an outrageous amount of information and knowledge he shared with all of us. We created our own sense of a schedule which helped the PCVs know what was going on and the trainer Youssoupha to help people stay focused. We attempted to have lecture for about 1-2, then have a hands on demonstration; this was really helpful for the people to see how the concepts are applicable in their fields and Youssoupha was able to better explain the procedures. We held all of the demonstrations at the school, which is located right next to the venue we had the seminar at, the school is at the edge of the village but people frequent that area when leaving the village making it a perfect place for passer bys to witness the techniques. We did 2 seeded Moringa beds, one was double dug, the other was done by a participant using their traditional techniques, we then forced a stick into the beds to show the difference in depths. We added the soil amenities needed such as manure, Neem leaves, and ash; then assigned someone to water the beds. Ivra, a man from my village was selected because he lives right next to the school. It seems everyone took away something from the seminar, and will hopefully share the knowledge, I’d like to hold a meeting in a few weeks with the attendees and invite other people from the village just for a short 2 hour seminar for the new trainers to train others- just a simple round table seminar. Photo by: Madeline Tiee

The participants that attended were scattered between those involved in various groups including microlending, rice fields, hygiene committees, gardeners, and the Tostan alphabetization teacher (who invited his regional representative), and the regional representative from the local NGO Counterpart International. The seminar was semi-formal, it was held in my village giving it a more laid back atmosphere, but the attendees were all given notebooks, and pens, including certificates after the seminar. I think they all took a lot from this seminar, many people keep telling me that Youssoupha promised them seeds, which he didn’t but I’m gonna try to find out if I can set up a seed distributor in the village. I want to find a tree seeds distributor somewhere near by purchase some seeds and sell them to the people who want them so I can continue this with someone from the village; also if the people buy the seeds they’re more than likely to take care of the trees- just saying. It’s the same with my personal items, if I purchased it I know how hard I worked for that money and I’m willing to take better care of my stuff.

So after the Ag Seminar I was exhausted and trying to round up all the little things I had borrowed, just wrap everything up before it gets dark. A teacher comes up to me and says, I need you to draw me something for my lesson tomorrow, and I need it before I go to bed so I can write my lesson based on what you draw…. I look at Sarah Keyes who was a trooper and SOOO helpful through all of this, and I tell her our work isn’t over yet. So Sarah is given a little while to rest as I draw my picture of a little boy peeing in a toilet and another one of a little boy peeing on the wall, as I finish up Sarah starts on a picture of the river and all the activities people use it for – ultimately to later drink the water… It was a hygiene lesson, so Sarah and I start coloring, working under candle light and cell phone flashlights, exhausted, hysterical, hungry, and I’m not artistic. Sarah suggests I should make the cool designs in the little boys head that the Senegalese men sometimes get shaved into their heads, such as zig zags… I think it’s a great idea and now my man has what looks like thunder bolts going down the back of his head- professional Hadiel, it gathers others attention. I deliver the pictures to the teacher who wasn’t asleep yet, I made my deadline, he looks at it and I point to the little boy and goes, “he’s cool, check out his head” then laughed at my own stupid humor, and you know that laugh of exhaustion- it sounds a little crazy, that was my laugh. The teacher just looked at it and goes, thanks this looks really good.

Sarah and I pass out, I wake up early in the morning and allow Sarah to sleep in, then I get sucked into a meeting of a man just yelling at me because he wasn’t at a meeting about the Cas de Sante and he’s the treasurer, and it was my fault that I haven’t been in contact with him about the Cas de Sante. You can’t yell at me, I don’t care what language but I have to defend myself, and so that’s what happened. My father laughed hysterical at all the things I said (he probably apologized for the crazy American’s ways after I left), but I think people understood where I was coming from and I think I had a large enough audience to know that they can’t blame me for their mistakes. I do realize I made a mistake and I will change that for the future, which I told him, but he has to realize his mistake as well and be aware that he can’t rely on others if he wants to get things done. Thankfully Sarah was at my site still so I could get that venting off my chest ASAP rather than calling a volunteer to explain, so I go back in my room and have verbal throw up. Amber arrives at my site a little while later and we get prepared because that was the first day of CAS DE SANTE Project!! We purchased some paint a few weeks before and I postponed the painting process until the Ag Seminar was over, and I mean literally the day after the Ag Seminar we painted the entire Cas de Sante, it was also exhausting! It went really well though, and my brother was really helpful. Our group of painters, Sarah, Amber, Usman, his friend- dunno his name, and me. Why did we paint the Cas de Sante and not hire someone? Because I’m cheap, have 2 hands, free labor (thanks Sarah and Amber), and if the village doesn’t sweat for it, they won’t take care of it. It looked awesome, you can see pictures. I thought our room was going to be red, no they wanted it pink. I thought the color was hideous, like bubble gum throw up, but the Senegalese LOVED it. Usman and I had a competition who ever room was better didn’t have to paint the last room (totally my idea, obviously- I don’t think they set up competitions of this nature) everyone loved my room because of the color. Gross, but whatevs. So! Paint of the cas de santé, check. Now we’re waiting to get benches made (also free because I’m making people in the village do this as part of their community contribution) we haven’t been able to find good wood to get the benches made with though, so we’re waiting for those to arrive. Then we’ve got a shade structure to put up and then hopefully the last thing is just the medication. NEAT! Hopefully everything goes smoothly, which it probably won’t but that’s fine I’m ready for a few bumps in the road.

The new stage has arrived, they came into country I believe March 9th, it’s exciting to have some clean people fresh off the plane. The Podor department was suppose to get a new volunteer but because of some unforeseen challenges we will not be receiving a new volunteer. The Matam region (to the east) and the walo (west) will be getting new volunteers but the volunteers right in the middle will not. It’s still just volunteers from my stage and one older volunteer from the Urban Ag sector.

The Podor Department, aka Team Podor is planning a Girls Camp hopefully held during July 10-July 16th, this is a leadership camp, with many different activites/lessons each day including cultural exchange, arts and crafts, environmental, business skills etc. The planning of this camp started about 2 months ago and has been going really well, kind of slow just because we’re dealing with everyone’s schedules and a few volunteers (including myself) will be taking vacation soon. We will be working with girls who are in the oldest class at the primary school (equiv to 6th grade), and the youngest class at the college (7th grade). We’ll also be working with the Michelle Sylvester Scholarship winners Jonno worked with last year, they’ll act as the Jr. Camp Leaders. The amazing language instructor Sakhir will hopefully help us, coming on the last day (the same day the participants fathers come) having a discussion with the fathers about the girls’ education. FOLLOWED by, the girls presenting their dream job, future goals, and how they’ll obtain it, etc; to their fathers. It’s going to be an amazing Camp and we’ve got great ideas flowing for it all, and it’s been really great working on this! I’m really enjoying doing group projects such as this, and Team Podor works really well together.

Still doing the English classes, we haven’t had too many classes though because I normally come to Ndioum on the weekends, not always of course but I feel guilty leaving them. Not many students still attend the lessons though and we’re just teaching random stuff at this point because of the stagnation of attendees. I have 3 students who could fool you into thinking they’re fluent. They’re amazing! Boys group and Girls group haven’t been happening either, just been super busy.

I recently hosted a CIEE student March 20th (Sunday), I don’t know if I wrote about the last one Kat- she came during the month of November, this student’s name is Shaina and she was really cool. It was a great experience, but sadly I got really sick the day she came to my site. Vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pains, light headedness, this lasted for the whole time she was there; but there was one day I was able to get up and do stuff so I took her to see the monkeys, and take an adventure on my nature walk out to Peru (where the gardens are). The day after that we were leaving to come to Ndioum she would spend the night in Ndioum then continue to Dakar, and I’ve just been hanging out in Ndioum. Feeling much better, and procrastinating work. I’ll be returning to site tomorrow, to do random work that I needed help with and thought the CIEE student would be a perfect form of free labor, but I was way too sick to do anything.

A about 3 weeks ago I did an art project with the 4th grade class at the Primary School, we drew pictures that represented Aram, and wrote about why we drew each of the things this was for the International Art Exchange program, it went really well. The pictures are amazing, they're also posted on my picasa web album. The kids didn't really describe why each thing was used/drawn, it was hard to explain to them that other people don't see charrettes, what are charrettes used for. They just responded "well we see it, so we drew it" yes ... but why?! I'm gonna go ahead and translate what they wrote in french into Pulaar and English and submit it. It sucks they didn't describe the things correctly but I think I can just write a letter. It'll be interesting to get the other schools pictures. This exchange program works by submitting 25+ pictures by 2 deadlines (jan or may) from the address you send it they'll send the pictures to another school that's participating with the same grade level and I'll receive pictures from another part of the world but the same grade level and we'll read over the children's art and discuss the differences, tying in a cross cultural lesson. Fun! I hope when I send 'em they'll be received before May 3rd (the deadline).

My boss will be coming up to my site soon to have a meeting with my village about their expectations, I’m having some difficulty getting people to take responsibility for the projects/ just working with me. I a lot of the work I’m doing is going great don’t get me wrong, and obviously I’m busy but the work I’m doing isn’t working with Senegalese people if you’ve noticed, I’m independently doing a lot of this work. I want the village to be motivated enough to want to work with me and we can do projects together, but it’s just not happening that way. I’ve been keeping myself busy, obviously with all this other work and I’m heading up the Girls Camp so that’s been really good, not saying I’m in charge because this is very much so a team effort, I’m the Girls Camp party planner, keeping us organized and delegating responsibilities you could say. I’m excited my boss is taking the time to come to my site and talk to the village, I hope that the teachers will also be present because that’s been a frustrating group to work with. I think this will be good that he comes and understands the complications and can advice me. The thing is I love my village, and the people, it’s amazing! It’s a great place to live, honestly it’s beautiful, but it’s hard to do the work.

There are a few other trainings for the new stage I might be involved with one of them, I’m not positive yet, I received a text saying I was signed up for it already- miscommunication I believe. So I’m not sure if I’ll be a part of it or not, we’ll soon find out. If so, that means I’ll be in Thies April 18th. Like I said nothing is known yet, so I’m not holding my breath. The training is about “Behavior Change”.

My SeneGAD (Senegal Gender and Development) position is --- well its there. I don’t really know what my position is and that’s because of the lack of communication, the person I’m replacing is incredibly busy so I’m just waiting to hear about what’s expected of me, or what I need to do. I will attend the new stages training May 10th to do a presentation about SeneGAD activities, which will exciting once again I don’t really know what I’m doing so I need to try to go over the top rather than just settle for a half ass job. May 13th is the new stages swear in, when they become actual volunteers and not trainees; I’ll also attend that hopefully and eat some amazing food, then May 14th I’ll leave to go to Thailand!! What what! I’m super excited, nervous, and scared because of my A) lack of planning (I know the places, kind of, that I’ll be visiting) B) lack of language skills C) I’m doing this on my own. But all of those reasons make it sooo exciting, this is something completely new and I need a switch of pace. That sounds weird seeing as I’m living in Senegal, but everything in Senegal has become part of my life, it’s not new anymore, things don’t shock me, and I’ve got a ritual here. I’m “integrated” you could say. So this vacation will be a great way for my adrenaline to rush, and a boost of motivation. I guess what I’m saying is, I need a vacation. So I’ll be in Thailand May 14th- May 30th; the places I’m looking at visiting include: Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Pai, Chiang Rai, and somewhere down south. I don’t really know where yet, but I’m taking the slow pace of transportation (rather than intercountry flights) so I need to schedule days for travel. I’m more exciting to go up North and see mountains, and go on treks; I love the beach and the pictures are beautiful but I need some mountains in my life right now. So my first stop is to go up North, and Insh’allah visit the beach sites.

Shout out to my amazing mother who always sends me packages, this last one was amazing!! I love all the packages you send me and thanks for not forgetting about me. For the rest of you, I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.

Loves and bear hugs

Hadiel Mohamed

I've recently decided to take a journey, a vacation for so many reasons other than relaxing. I'm going to Thailand, and the cheesyness of labeling it as a spiritual journey doesn't defer me from actually calling it that. I'm taking this trip solo because I feel like that's something I've always feared, traveling on my own, and also travelin' to a country that doesn't have english as it's official language. And no, Senegal doesn't count because I came here with a group of Americans. This is going to be a trip for incredibly selfish reasons, and it'll be amazing. I'll fly out May 14th, and return May 30th. Hopefully seein' the North and South of Thailand. I don't really have my "agenda" scheduled, but I know there are specific places and things I want to do including; trekking, elephant sanctuary, and beaches. Simple and sweet. If anyone has any tips, I'm all ears.

Other than this trip, I've been planning another trip with one of my best friends Steve, we're going to take a bike trip for about 3 weeks around the South of Senegal. We figured this is going to be a cheap trip, and we both love cheap. With these trips I believe I have about 15 vaca days left during my service, and I know barcelona and morrocco are cheap to travel to from Senegal so if nothing else comes up maybe that's where I'll head to. No one knows, and all of this is tentative, but life feels a little lighter knowing I'm going to have a change of scenery for a little while.

Site is going really well, my village is beautiful the people are awesome, and work is slow. I'm going to have an Ag seminar March 16th, I'm really excited for this I think it'll be a great seminar. Hopefully some projects will come from this as well, or more trainings. My brother and I have been buying the stuff for the health hut, so i will be painting the shit out of it March 17th :). Hopefully some pcvs will come and give me a hand, and hopefully my brother will help out! I figure if I purchase some candy and play my music helpers will follow. I had an awesome experience with monkeys right outside of my village, then followed by camels. Every time I see camels I tend to scream the pulaar word for it, which I don't actually know so I just kinda mumble/scream which people think is ridiculous, but they're so awesome to see. I swear they're dinosaurs, I have no evidence of this but I'm convinced!! Anyways I try to approach the camels and get scared for my life; they're really fierce animals.

I participated in an International Art Exchange with my primary school's CM1 class, the students drew pictures of what represents Senegal/Aram. Their pictures are really interesting, it was a fun activity! Really got the kids intune with their artistic talent. I'll try to scan the pictures and post them on my picasa album at some point.

I'll be returning to site tomorrow to prepare for everythin' and once again I don't know when I'll have internet next but I just want to add this one point....

Happy one year in Senegal Hadiel!

Welcome to Senegal new volunteers!

Greetings! I’m in Thies right now, but leaving tomorrow morning at about 7am to head to Dakar to start the glorious beginnings of another All Vol Conference, but this one is bigger and probably a little better because it’s followed by the biggest party in Peace Corps Senegal; WAIST, West Africa Invitational Softball Tournament, a 3 day party of softball games. Each region, i.e. North, Kaolack, Dakar, etc. have their own themes for “team wear.” The North’s theme is Grease Corps Jersey Shore; another words gotti. It’s exciting, I don’t really have a costume yet and time is running out, I got the skirt and leggings (leggings are incredibly necessary for this costume) I just need a top. The best part, the first thing I bought were the accessories. I hope the future pictures are entertaining for all of you readers.

I came to Thies yesterday because today we had a SeneGAD conference (Senegal Gender and Development) it was really interesting and this is something that really interests me. The various sessions were inspiring, I’m excited to change my ways when conducting gender like work, and improving my ways, as well as incorporating new activities. Also, during this conference we had SeneGAD board member elections, the positions that were up are as follows: President, Treasurer, Fundraising Coordinator, and Activities Coordinator. I applied for Activities Coordinator, and I guess I was the only volunteer that did so I got the position, YAY!! I want to take this position and apply it towards a newly introduced concept as far as Peace Corps Senegal goes, “Men as Partners” this is involving the men in gender work, but approaching it in various forms, for example discussion groups but it stresses the men’s ability to come up with the problems in their society and the resolutions they feel will work. It just shows the men the issues at hand, and why the issues are there. I’m pumped to do this work, I think I do a lot of this work already when communicating with people but it’s normally me just yelling at people about how I don’t agree with something in their culture, rather than having them realize why. We all feel better when we come up with our own resolutions without others forcing us.

I had a great conversation with a bunch of men on the charrette and then it continued once we got to my destination and more men joined. The charrette driver asked me if I was married and I said I had a lot of husbands, he responded that I didn’t understand and I brought up the fact that he has a lot of wives so I have a lot of husbands- as simple as that. It brought up a large conversation and of course (as I always do) I bring up Osama (my older brother), I told them my brother is a big, and he’s got muscles cause he always works out, but he cooks…. Does that mean he’s not a man?! This always gets people worked up, I tell them he cooks for his girlfriend, and he’s a better cook than me. Obviously I’m over exaggerating, kidding he’s actually really good. But it proves my point as well, he’s not ashamed to cook, and he’s a man! So the conversation gets really heated, and I’m screaming during a large portion, then I just tell them well your life is different than mine and I don’t agree with yours, I’m not going to live my life like yours, I want to work I want to travel, etc etc etc. We all walk away knowing we’re good friends and there are no hard feelings of course, it was a good conversation even though I walked away saying you guys are cowards and you’re always scared of being ashamed (hehe, I love my work). The crowd of volunteers I was with walked away once they heard me start my ranting, so I caught up with them and we were getting on our public transportation and a man from the discussion ran to the car as I was getting in and just said “Penda (my local name), everything you said, it was very good. It was nice to discuss that with you, and it was really good, everything you said was true, thank you.” These men were much older too, but that was such a great feeling, the tactic I took maybe it worked because Senegalese people like theatrical conversations in that sort where people are getting worked up for nothing just because it’s fun, which it is, but there are better ways to continue these discussions that will be more effective, that’s what I want to learn.

I’ve never been very charismatic, and I really need to work on that trait when attempting to continue my work. Also another thing that was reverberated during this SeneGAD conference, letting girls know that if they claim they want to be in an early marriage, that’s okay it’s their culture but I can help enforce that it should be their choice, and what exactly an early marriage means to their future, I can’t pass judgment which is so complicated! So much to learn, sometimes I feel like I’m too young to have obtained this “class.”

So moving on, site is awesome, recent visitors enjoyed my site as well. I’ve just been so busy lately, I’ve got boys and girls groups going on, and I’m teaching English classes to the 2 oldest primary school kids 2 days a week (one class CM2, and one class CM1), then I’m also attempting an Environmental Club, which isn’t really going so well. It’s hard to get the kids in the Environmental Club to put in the work to water the garden, they just want to see things growing so they realize why they should be taking care of it. Right now it’s just a dry plot of land, but it’s not going to get beautiful unless they water it. It sounds like it should be easy, but I think this is something I’m really forcing onto the children. As much as they say they want to be in this group I don’t think they realize they have to put in a lot of work for this if they want to reap the benefits.

Fast Forward! 2/23/11 Waist is over, and it was glorious! I had so much fun and now I’m back in Ndioum and I’m excited to get back to site and start/continue my work. It was a great time spent in Dakar, and I saw some great people. All in all, I totally suggest coming to Senegal and visiting all of us during WAIST. Our theme was Grease Corps Jersey Shore; which even though this was an incredibly lame theme, we rocked it! We looked amazing!

Friday I will be returning to site and preparing everything and anything I have to for my upcoming projects; the Health Hut is still in the works- my brother supposedly forgot about the day we choose to go buy the stuff for the preparation of the Health Hut, so I told him he had to wait for my return, so hopefully he’ll be more motivated and take the initiative to start this process. I also have to spread the word about the Agriculture Seminar I’ll be having, an AG Trainer from Peace Corps will come to my village and hold the seminar, I’m trying to really limit the number of people who come but that’s so hard because there are so many important people to invite. But hopefully after this seminar we’ll continue the seminars so that these trainees will become trainers, and will continue this process. I really hope this will cause a spread of knowledge.

Well enjoy the pictures!

as you've all noticed I've posted some awesome biking pictures on my online photo album. now here's the story:

I recently hosted 2 french couch surfers, jeremie and claire. They're on a bike trip starting in France and continuing until Madagascar, they've been biking for about 6 months and will go on for 2 years. They're incredibly nice and insightful human beings. Their first day of training was their first day of riding, amazing! I really enjoyed hosting them, and they were even so kind to allow Sarah to join them from Ndioum to my site (I was already at my site). They spent the night at my site and then Sarah and I joined them until Pete where Sarah and I branched off to go to her site, and I spent a few nights at her site; which is always nice to see how other volunteers live. I then biked back from Sarah's site to my site, spent a few more nights at my site then headed to Ndioum- by bike. Sarah, Amber, and I made the long trek to Ndioum (about 60+k.) Spent a few nights in Ndioum got some work done, celebrated Sarah's birthday; then I road solo back to my site. As I was riding the wind was way too intense and I was making horrible timing so I got in a car for about 20k, and then road the rest of the way back to site - got incredibly lost because I didn't want to ride on the tedious sand so I road on a clay path that ended up taking me the wrong direction, I was tired, hunger, and scared I was going to get back to site after dark-- but it all worked out I saw some kids and they showed me the path. Lesson learned, wind blows (no pun intended, ha).

I've been really busy at site which is really reassuring, I'm enjoying the constant stream of work. This past week has been intense, Sarah came and stayed in my village just to hang out and have some girl time; we both needed it. Then yesterday Camille came to my village and we built a rocket stove for my family.

Wednesday I'm headed to Thies for a Gender Development conference, after that conference I'm going to Dakar for another conference, "All Vol" it's a conference that includes all West Africa volunteers and a softball game.

I greet you all; much love.

Hello World

It’s been awhile, and you are all due for a new update. I’m in Ndioum now, yesterday we had a big training seminar for our teachers. It seemed to go really well, it was a seminar about changing the ways the teachers teach, just getting creative and adding hand on activities- in particular to discuss environmental health. For example, having the children create a garden and discuss mathematics within the garden. My boss Mamadou came up to teach the seminar, he did a really good job and I think some of the teachers really enjoyed the seminar. It was a pain in my arse to get the teachers to the seminar, we had to leave my village really really early and I had to go around and wake people up- because I am now people’s mother?! I dunno it was kind of frustrating but at once we got there we were the first group to get there and we were coming from the farthest places, so way to go on our part. Not only were we the first, we were also early- what up!! So today, I’m going to be touring an NGO called Tostan’s office/house. The other volunteers and I are interested in having a Girls Camp this summer, to teach them leadership roles, and the man at Tostan offered us to hold it at the office, so we want to go take a look and discuss everything in greater detail because we want to have this camp for maybe 5 days, nothing is planned in great detail- that’s our goal for today hopefully. I want to come to Ndioum just to hide out for a little while, I think some couch potato time is necessary.

I’ve got some couch surfers staying with me in village Friday night, that’s going to be exciting! I love visitors!! Friday afternoon I’ve got my 3rd English class but this time I separated the classes so this is the oldest class at the school I’m doing a lot of work with this class so I know a lot of their names and hopefully I’m building bonds with them. Saturday afternoon will be the second oldest class (these classes are all at the primary school). Teaching English has been going pretty well, but like I’ve said I’ve only had 2 classes. The first class I showed up, and so did 70 students. It was the 2 oldest classes and I was sooo overwhelmed, with that many students every 5 seconds I had to ask someone to be quiet. I only wanted to teach them for an hour just to get introductions, but we went on for 2.5 hours- holy damn. The next day there were only 40 students, but they were just as talkative so I ended class after 1.5 hours, I just got way too tired of screaming be quiet. A kid went and grabbed the teacher’s whip and handed it to me and instructs me to hit them when they start getting out of line. It hurt that a kid would think that’s the only way to deal with unruly children; I of course declined and made an announcement that I will not hit them but I will kick them out of my class, and I will only remove them out of my class because the class and I discussed what we would do with loud students and they insisted kicking them out. I don’t want to kick kids out- that makes me sad.

Other than the English class I’ve also started a boys group and a girls group, we meet at different times and the kids just play around do theatre, music, dance, and hopefully we will have discussions- that’s the real reason I started the group but now we’ve just got to have a nice light environment, because it’s going to be hard to get the kids to open up, especially the boys, yikes. My environmental club isn’t going so well just cause it’s hard for the kids to take the initiative to do the work; so they normally wait until I suggest things to be done, or I get mad that no one is watering the garden then they all start…flooding it? It’s a strange dynamic. I don’t have any of the teachers helping me with any of my work, well I don’t really have anyone in the village helping so that’s really frustrating and I feel like that’s why I run into a lot of these issues.

So work is exciting, because it’s there and that’s reassuring. The Cas de Sante process will be starting very soon hopefully once I return to site, according to my brother the village has collected all of their cash contribution so I can now withdraw the money from the bank and the process can begin, yay! I feel like for this project I’m going to be holding their hand through the whole process because I’m nervous of something going wrong and the village not getting a health post because they spend some of the money for something else and we’re over budget- I’m assuming we’re still going to run into this problem but if I’m in control I can blame myself and take responsibility for my actions – it’s kind of hard expecting that from others.

That’s all. Loves and hugs.

Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas. Christmas was spent in Ndioum with a few volunteers, many left for holiday. It was a great time with friends, like a little family celebration. I got to cook tons of food which was empowering- controlling what you eat and fulfilling certain food cravings, yes please!

2011, welcome to my life! I spent New Years in Saint Louis, which is absolutely beautiful. I’m in love with Saint Louis, there’s everything there, you can walk around and act like a tourist and not get bothered- or you can throw done some mad Pulaar skills and show everyone what’s up. Speaking Pulaar in Saint Louis was actually pretty easy, because Saint Louis is only about 4 hours away from some Pulaar speaking villages/towns. I arrived at Saint Louis Dec 31st and met up with fellow volunteers at our hotel. It was a Peace Corps chaotic celebration, which means it was ultimately tons of fun! Akon performed a free concert for the people of Ndaar (Saint Louis), which I was about to go but never made it down there which was fine I still spent New Years with great people and got to hear all about Akon’s lipsyncing hamster ball performance afterwards.

My birthday arrived… uninvitedly. I hate birthdays, one year older- gross. I’m now 23 years old, I spent my birthday in village. I had an Environmental Club meeting with my primary school kids, and we went ahead and seeded our garden- I didn’t tell anyone in my village it was my birthday cause they don’t really celebrate birthdays and I don’t like celebrating my birthday. I told my EE club about it the next day, only because they asked me how old I was and I told them that as of the day before I’m 23, and they were disappointed I didn’t tell them it was my birthday. But come on! Really?! I’m totally fallin’ in love with these kids, I’m enjoying working with kids so much it’s going great. It’s really hard but I want my service to be dedicated to working with the kids. It’s easier working with the kids that are still in school just because it’s easier for me to gather them up, but I want to work with the other kids too to teach them more technical skills for their life and work. It’s just harder to organize, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

So right now I’m waiting for my village to gather their cash community donation money for the health hut project after I receive all of that I’ll take the rest of the money out of the bank account and we’ll start putting that project into action. But in the mean time I’ve been working with my EE club, of about 11 students in the oldest class for primary school. I’m attempting to start up a reforestation group but once again it’s hard coordinating schedules especially because it’s working with adult males… tedious!

Awa, a gender development trainer came to my primary school and did a talk with the CM1 and CM2 kids, which are the two oldest classes. She talked to them about forced marriages, staying in school, studying hard etc. We also had her do a talk at the College in Ndioum, because there are no volunteers in Ndioum we all came together and helped. This talk was much more serious because the older crowd, an instructor talked about teachers and students having sex because the kids think it’ll make them cooler, or benefit them somehow. Also she addressed pedophilia, and incest… it was much more intense than I assumed. But it was really important for this talk to happen, and sure enough the kids were really happy they got to hear it. Awa has such a way about herself she can talk to anyone about anything and there is never any judgment passed, you just want to open your whole life story up to her. She’s a really great person, and a really helpful thing is that she knows pretty much every language in Senegal so when people try to label her as a “toubab” it’s easily proven that she is still very much a Senegalese woman.

The Podor region volunteers are now organizing a summer camp for the girls in our village and ndioum, so that’ll be really exciting hopefully to happen in June. Next week we have a training for our teachers so I’ll have access to internet next Wednesday. Other than that enjoy the short update.

Loves. xox

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! Mine was great, I spent it in Ndioum, I was accompanied by Amber, Paul and Maddy for our Christmas in the Futa. It was a good way to celebrate the holidays, Christmas Eve we made our feast, Christmas day we relied on desserts and for dinner we made a pizza. It was surprisingly delicious! I returned to site just to stay for a few days mainly to check up on the garden at the school, I noticed a kid was watering it every day; he’s amazing! I asked him if he signed up for the group and he said No but he wanted to be in it, but he pretty much got conned into watering the garden because all the other kids ran away from school once class was over (they’re on vacation), but this kid didn’t run fast enough I guess. I felt really bad for the kid, he doesn’t have anything invested in this garden he just got told to take care of it for the other students. I invited him to join the group and he’ll ultimately be my favorite student I can see it now. This kid is awesome too, I went to his house to greet his family and he was so kind making sure his little brothers and sisters weren’t bothering me and that his mom and grandma didn’t embarrass him. It was hilarious, it was so… American, aka familiar.

I’ve been complaining about not having any work to do in village (this has been a long winded complaint) but then all of a sudden everyone’s having meetings (and someone invited me to their meeting so now everyone wants me at their meetings!! Even if I have no clue what’s happening, I’m a new hot item) and now I’m starting to con people into working with me, by telling them about my work then saying “So you’ll help me right cuz my Pulaar is horrible.” Now they have to help me. I’m amazing at being annoying. It sucks that work is finally starting yet it’s the holidays. I’m going to St. Louis for New Years, followed by a short trip to run some errands in Dakar.

I’m talking with a man in my village about starting an adult group about reforestation, I think it’d go really well especially because this man is really smart and seems really interested in working with me. I finally had a talk with the school director to stress our work together for projects in the village and I started an Environmental Club with the older kids of the primary school, it seems to be going pretty good- other than the fact that the kids are on vacation right now. I think this is going to be a really fun project, I hope everything works out! I received an email from PC saying I received all my funding for my grant and they’ll place the money in my account soon; incredibly exciting!! So I’ve got the Health Hut preparations, school garden, hopefully soon my own demo garden (once I get permission from the man who owns the land). I feel like I’m never in village for that long so starting projects for myself (like a garden) is hard because I need to make sure I'm there for a long period of time to maintain the seedling (metaphorically speaking and literally). Recently I was there for 3 weeks and no one wanted to work with me until a few days before I was leaving for Ndioum for Christmas, and then I went back for 3 days and people kept saying “I haven’t seen you in awhile where have you been?” I told them “I was here for 3 weeks, and you saw me, I was gone for 4 days and that’s a long time?” and they just said “…yeah, that’s a long time. Don’t leave. Or take me with you, we’ll go together.” Pfff, come on guys! You can obviously tell why this would be frustrating.

So I’ll be in St. Louis/Dakar until January 5th I believe hopefully I can get back to site sooner. I really want to. I hear Akon will be in St. Louis for a free concert on New Years, what up! Party central.

January 14th I’ve got Awa one of my bosses coming up to do a discussion with the female students about staying in school; which is great and I’m super excited. But after our discussion she’s going to do one at the school in Ndioum (where our regional house is) so some volunteers are going to come to Ndioum to help out with that; so we can have group discussions with the middle schools girls. It’ll be a lot of fun and this is the kind of work I really cherish, I know I’ll look back on this and be excited to share stories about the girls I met. I keep thinkin’ that’s more time out of site, then I’ve got a training for the teachers in Jan 26th and there will be preparation for that as well. Let’s just say it’s hard to keep a schedule in this country. Once things start rolling I’ve gotta pick up and leave elsewhere. But I’m really excited that my work is picking up right now and people seem really excited to work with me, I’ve made so many contacts with people just in the last 2 weeks it’s really promising that work will be starting up. And at this point I don’t even care if my Pulaar sucks if you want to work with me you’ll find a way to understand me and I’ll find a way to understand you cuz I do want to work with them! I also feel like when I leave village I miss out on a lot of important things that no one will update me on; so I'm now not only writing everyone's name down I'm making them show me their house and give me their phone number - that's right.

Yesterday I attended a meeting at our Federation du Lao it’s our micro lending bank, I’m not positive if it’s actually doing any large projects right now, but the meeting was just an seminar about the different roles and responsibilities of the members and leaders. Which was great for me to attend and meet the Presidents of each group; young adults, women, and men. The visiting men leading the seminar were hilarious, and of course we had the craziest conversation… About players, sex, condoms, etc… and how I think it’s not good to play games because that’s why HIV gets spread and they were talking about how playing games is fun and it keeps you young; I just have to say in my cultural training course they said people don’t talk about this stuff… I have to say people do. It’s a natural conversation, just catches you by surprise when everyone tells you you’ll never have these conversations and then you find yourself in the middle of a conversation about sex, boners,condoms, HIV tests, etc. Anyways, one of the teachers asked me what I was doing later in the week so I could go to another meeting he was holding in another town, mainly just to invite me to see this town (it's his home town and not far), and I told him I was planning on going to Ndioum this morning so I could spend the night there and leave from there to St. Louis for New Years. Well this man has a car, and 2 seconds later I had a free ride that evening to Ndioum. Took him up on the offer and now I’m in Ndioum :). The man also told me about a festival he'll be throwing in his village in March; so I got an invite to that with another free ride, and a promise that there will be meat (i honestly just go to meetings for the delicious food I understand nothing they say except, "lunch is ready, penda come eat" followed by "SHE DIDN'T EAT ENOUGH GET HER MORE FOOD" i love it. yum yum yum.) Anyways, it's a concert in a near by village and he told me his sister is a fortune teller (i've got 2 in my village and i've already visited them, they're awesome... actually they conned me into visiting them to get my fortune told, it was scary at first). This just goes to show the interesting people you meet in this country. I cherish these meetings, if there is no concert no fortune teller no music no festival i don't really care. This man showed such an act of kindness of course I'll go to his village and of course take a friend (i volunteer sarah to join me cuz her site is really close to this village)! I love these run ins with people.

The greatest feeling you can get is leaving site and coming back and having a pleasantville like return with people peeking out of their mud hut windows saying Penda!! A Artii?! Arr, wotto! A heydii? Arr, foofto ina wuli jooni! Eey Jam Holto charrette maa woni?! A wadii esport. Penda, you're back. come here eat lunch. are you hungry? come here rest, it's hot right now. oh peace, where is your charrette (i always say no my legs are good i walk.) You're doing sports. I'm very active because I walk...ahah they're funny. Not only is this a great welcome back having the kids run to greet you and everyone curious where you've been/noticing your presence isn't there, but it's a warm feeling to know all these people would love it if I just came to their house and ate their food. That's what they want, and if you tell them no I'm good you eat it, because they need this food so much more than I do- I still eat you guys, its just I have the means to supply my own food, or I eat with my family as well that I pay monthly for food/room/etc. Another one of my favorite things is the fact that my village will protect me.

This is a really dumb story, eating at the bowl at the meeting I have never eating with any of these people before and I barely know half of them I only know some of the younger guys who were there cause they're my charrette drivers. There is always someone who will make sure they throw me food, i feel more comfortable eating with the women because they take care of me in that sense, like when I eat at the women's lunch bowl at my house my neena is constantly throwing me food - my dad does too but my neena pushes all the food to my side and my dad is more realistic about how much to throw. So eating at this bowl with complete new people (who of course all know me, and I have no clue what any of their names are because I'm horrible at names- I'm working on it!) and this younger guy starts throwin' me the meat in the middle and everyone is yelling at me that I'm not eating as I'm eating all the food. Once the meat is all done in our bowl any meat found in the rice is then placed in front of me with men yelling EAT! I was also eating with my hands so mind you I've got rice all over my clothes with the oil spots so even if i throw the rice off you can see where it was....i'm 5 years old and I've got a group of men taking care of me. Just to be followed by me walking outside to wash my hands off and a man I don't even know who he was just goes Penda, you didn't eat lunch. WHAT!! You didn't even see my side of the bowl I ate all of it, but this is what the Senegalese do; they take care of you. They welcome you, they all just want to be a part of your life. It's the same in America, you're mean to someone you think doesn't like you because they don't give you the time of day or you have these conceptions built up about this person so you convince yourself their this way even if you don't know; then you get to know them and you realize shame on you you're judgment was wrong. I love that feeling in America, it reminds me people always surprise you and it's a humbling experience to put you back in your place. I feel like when I have bad run ins with people here in Senegal (and vise versa I'm no angel) it's surrounding this issue- I just need to let them know I do cherish them, and I'm no better than they are, we're all in this together, and we're all human- we all have weaknesses, but lets share our strengths. Mine is, my obnoxious laugh.

Today Paul and Maddy are coming to Ndioum to celebrate Paul’s birthday so I’m going to stay here for that, and then the 31st I’ll be headin’ to St. Louis for the first time to prepare myself for Akon’s special appearance/ he’s throwing quite the concert I’ve heard- best part- it’s free, oh and all my friends will be there. It’s kind of Peace Corps tradition to celebrate New Years in St. Louis, kind of like how it’s tradition to go to Kedegou for 4th of July, Thanksgiving up North, Halloween in Tamba, etc.

Akon in St. Louis, quite exciting! Well, I’m gonna get back to catchin’ up on some Glee. Yay!

I'm back from the All Vol Conference and I'm slightly recharged, but I'm really excited to go back to village! I checked my email yesterday, first time in a long time and noticed my sister's email about how she couldn't donate to my grant online because it's been fully funded... WHAT!! Fully funded, that means all these amazing people donated to my grant and now I can start workin' on it! Well not just yet, I haven't received an update from Peace Corps about this being fully funded, just Huda and the Peace Corps website. Once I get the update from Peace Corps and they tell me what the next few steps are, my village and I will be executing just that! I'm so excited, I feel like this is the part of my work actually starting. Lately at site I've been feeling so lazy, and useless. Just sitting around not having any work to do, waiting for people to come back in town (many people leave the village for the holidays).

*For all of those who weren't able to donate to my project, save your donation for the next project I do through that funding.

This project probably wont be starting until mid January, because it'll take a while for me to get the money from the grant and then getting the village to follow through with what they promised for their contribution, including the monetary donation. But once it does start I'll be having some other Peace Corps volunteers come visit my site and help me paint the Health Hut (the village said they refused to have someone paint the Health Hut for free because no one knows how to paint, so I got frustrated and told them I'm gonna paint the Health Hut because they're all babies- oh and that I'm gonna have my friends come help.)

All Vol was a great conference we had a very detailed breakdown of the schedule getting to pick which ever presentation we wanted to go to for the hour, then being completely finished around 4 to let loose, and of course catch up with friends! A lot of my great friends are located in other regions, (and my region of course) so it's nice having these conferences where I get to see all my other friends I wouldn't normally see at my regional house. Some of the presentations I went to include, Working with Talibes, Visual Aids, Water Wise Schools, Working with ECHO, Sustainable Projects, etc. The second day of All Vol (it was only 2 days long) in the morning we had a display of appropriate technologies various volunteers have been working with. It was great seeing these creations displayed every where and really got me thinking a lot of the work I want to be doing is working with appropriate technologies. I don't necessarily see my village in need of a lot of the ones displayed but they were really exciting getting to see them in action.

Now I'm hanging out in Ndioum and I'll be leaving tomorrow to go back to site and attempt to bust out some projects, I just really need a counterpart or a few! I'm gonna try to just corner the new school director and be like "sir, start helping me!!" hopefully it works. So that's the update for now. Oh, I got a new camera because mine broke a few months ago, thanks for the camera momma!! Enjoy the pictures posted.

Happy belated Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving was an exciting festival for all of us North volunteers, we got to host volunteers from other regions in Senegal who come up for our Thanksgiving party! It was a lot of fun , the food was great, the company was interesting, the memories are best kept secret. It was a great break from site, and a great way to celebrate the holiday. I really appreciate the volunteers coming together for celebration, it was a lot of fun—sadly there were no leftovers though. We need to work on that in the future. Some people claimed one of the five chickens they wanted to kill, pluck, clean etc. It was a massacre. Along with the 2 turkeys. Sadly I missed out on the slaughtering because I went to the market to get my breakfast (bean sandwich.) but I was welcomed by some bloody volunteers, some a little shaken up too. Maybe next year I’ll try out my murder hands on a chicken…. Who am I kidding? I wanted to name all of them and teach them how to eat out of my hands. I tried to tell people we should save the chickens so we can have eggs…. They weren’t convinced.

The festivities are over and I’m back to work, with the luxury of staying in Ndioum to finish up my online work, i.e. fund raising for my health hut!! Check out the site and try to spread the word, my village and I would appreciate any donation (size doesn’t matter), any help would be greatly appreciated. Think of the donation as my package you haven’t sent me, or the Christmas gift you can’t give me. ;)

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=685-159

Site is going really well the only project I currently having going on is the Cas de Sante (health hut), there are many projects that will be starting it’s just been hard finding someone to work with in village because of the lack of counterparts and motivated people. But the projects will start and be rocking so no worries.

Fast forward updates: I’ll be in Thies December 2nd-December 4th for the All Volunteer Conference we discuss appropriate projects, implementations, sustainability, etc. West Africa Volunteers come to this conference, it’s going to be really exciting and it’s in Thies. I miss Thies a lot! It’s been forever.

I had a mouse in my room, his name was Harold he stole my earring and hid it in my trunk then tried to eat it. He is now out of my room, but it was exciting hiding under my mosquito net with a 3 year old making hissing noises at the trunk – I wanted him to think we were snakes and run away…. Didn’t work. At first I tried to scare the mouse by holding my machete and tapping the trunk, my 3 year old niece just told me “…. If you’re scared mom can get it out for you she’s not scared.” My response, “I want him out now but he’s gonna jump on me! Chello (the lil girl) if you’re not scared you try.” Chello “Penda (me), hit him with your machete.” Me: “I’m scared.” Chello: “Take all of your stuff out of the trunk and he’ll run.” Me: “Chello, I’m scared, you take my stuff out and let him run.” Chello: “no…. let’s get out your room’s too hot.”

Convo Gibby (4 years old) and I: Gibby: “Penda, what’s on your legs.” Me: “hair.” Gibby: “No, it’s thorns.” –Thanks Gibby.

Tabaski (a day to ask for forgiveness. Wiki it.) The 2 previous volunteers called and greeted my family on this holiday, both volunteers talked to my older sister Miyram. First volunteer got told “Your Pulaar is horrible, Penda’s is so much better. You forgot all of your Pulaar.” Second volunteer got told “Your Pulaar is amazing; Penda’s Pulaar is horrible. She can’t say the Tabaski greeting yet.” Miyram got off the phone and I went up to her and said “I can do the Tabaski greeting, but I don’t have to.” Miyram: “But Tabaski is a day for forgiveness, you need to ask for forgiveness.” Me: “But I’m not sorry, I haven’t done anything bad.” (Mind you my father is standing right behind me and is understanding all of this. Miyram: “You have to ask God for forgiveness.” Me: “No I don’t, he knows I haven’t done anything bad. I’m a good person. I’m not sorry.” Everyone at this point is laughing hysterically, including my intimidating father. I walk away with a smile on my face, completely clueless about what the Tabaski greeting actually is, and my family convinced my Pulaar is amazing. 2 points Hadiel.

I hosted an American study abroad student whose been studying in Dakar for the semester; it was a lot of fun she got to stay at my site with me and we went on adventures around site which is always fun. I had another visit by a giant snake, she got her fortune told by our traditional healer, and she got to witness what I think was the most exciting thing that could happen at site… this leads me to a very elaborate story and if you have questions please ask because I’m horrible at telling stories.

Tostan is an American NGO that works in Senegal, they do a lot of different projects within Senegal including an alphabetization program where they teach the locals how to read and write their local language. It’s a great organization of course with it’s pros and cons like any organization, the main thing about Tostan is they get a lot of their funding through other organizations because of their work with educating people about the dangers of FGC (female genital circumcision) the organization has gotten a lot of mixed reviews from various villages about this practice, but it’s a really important thing they’re doing (don’t forget this is my opinion). Tostan has a movie of testimonies they’ve compiled from various people in the Northern region and their experiences with FGC their opinions on the practice, concerns, etc. The video is done completely in Pulaar, with Pulaars, for the Pulaars – a very important recipe. Tostan has been going to various villages/towns in the North (where FGC is more widely practiced) and showing this film, they do it in a series of films at first they show black and white silent films which brings in the younger kids, then the Senegalese music videos which brings the teenagers, then they start the movie the introduction of a women telling her story of all the difficulties she’s had during child birth because she was circumcised (she states she was bleeding like a slaughtered animal). Surprise, Tostan came to my village!! I saw the movie I was there for the debate afterwards, and the whole time all I could think was – “I hope my village doesn’t think that I brought this movie, and I hope they don’t throw rocks at the projecting screen” I wanted my village to have a new age opinion of this practice, and realize the dangers it brings, but I couldn’t talk to them about this issue, it would ruin my hard work I’ve put in for integration, I’m not at the point where I can bring up conversations like this and get real answers. But I didn’t have to bring up the conversation. My friend Ode who is an American Tostan volunteer was there at my site and I had my mini freak out with her about how nervous I was, but she put me at ease; the man who brought the video to my village is from my village and now works in Paris for the Tostan office there. The village holds him in a very high regard and wouldn’t disrespect the film or his acts of kindness so there were no major displays of hostility.

This movie and experience was a catalyst, I was able to talk to a few younger girls and my brother about their thoughts on the movie and if it still happens at site and what they took away from the movie. It was the most rewarding talking to my brother and my favorite niece. Being able to hear them say they don’t think it’s safe and it causes too many problems, it’s rewarding to hear things like that. Now if they will still practice it I can’t know, but I know now the issue has been brought up and I know I have people who are willing to speak about it; I’d like to continue the talk.

Okay so other than asking for money one more time that’s all I’ve got for ya’ll. There are always more updates, and hopefully your questions/comments will help open the discussions of such.

Don’t forget:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=685-159

Tell your friends.

Greetings all! Long time no update, I thought I'd tell you a little bit about the work I'm going to be starting...inchallah.

So right now I'm in Dakar (I've been here for way too long, I'm all Dakared out), tomorrow I'll be going to Popenguine for another wild and crazy beach day. A lot of people from my stage will be meeting there because October 6th we'll be going to Joal for our Environmental Education and Preventive Health Summit. Volunteers from these sectors all get together in Joal and discuss the work they've done, what problems they've encountered and what advice they have to give others. It's going to be a really fun summit, a lot of people but some really great advice to apply to upcoming projects. I'll be in Joal until October 8th, after that I will be returning to my beloved North region! I miss my host family -- mainly the kids, pulaar, lecirri and hako, and sanctuary.

Once I return to site hopefully the projects will be coming into play. My counterpart (school director) will be returning from vacation, so I can talk to him about different projects and we can attempt to get estimates to build new classroom structures, because their temporary one (made out of sticks) fell down during a storm. Finding out the information about cost, and community contributions is the hard part for the grants, but after I collect that information I can submit my grant and then sit and wait... I've got that grant already written out just have to insert the numbers. Also, I've been working on a grant to get the Cas de Sante stocked with medication and materials so we can get it open! Yay! It's exciting things will be coming together, slowly but surely.

I want to start an Enviro Club for the kids at the school so we can have year round pepineres they're in charge of. I've got tons of seeds, and getting the kid's dedication and involvment will be so rewarding. Hopefully we can get a good group of kids who are actually interested in this, so they'll continue it without my help.

Once we get the Cas de Sante open the head Relais and I can work on some causeries for the village. I think it'd be fun to do these once a month! I'm excited for all this to come to play, I feel like I've accomplished nothing in site yet and I've got to be patient, but its making me feel lazy!!

I wasn't able to participate in the our first radio skit last monday because I was in Dakar for medical stuff, but once we go back we're going to record 2 radio shows!! I'm sooo excited to be a part of this, really nervous because my Pulaar is HORRIBLE! But it'll be a fun experience, and maybe the other radio djs will assist me. The radio show up North is Radio Pete, a lot of volunteers in various areas do work with their local/regional radio stations because it's the best media tool here. Sarah's site is right next to Pete so her ancien (previous volunteer) put her in contact with the main dj of Pete, we've finally got in contact with him to do some skits, Sarah, Evan, and James did the skit last week and they said it went really well. The skits are over important topics, for instance gender development, health, environment, etc. but they're pretty cheesy.

Exciting news!! Peace Corps Senegal has their own newsletter volunteers submit information about their projects, news, updates, fun stories, etc. It's a really cool newsletter called Sabaar, it's incredibly entertaining and it's something the volunteers are always anticipating reading. WELL, the Sabaar does it's very own Volunteer Spotlight where they choose a volunteer and ask them ridiculous questions and all of Peace Corps Senegal reads it.. I was picked for November! The questions are ridiculous, my answers are lame same old same old, but it feels like a great pat on the back.

That's all for now folks, enjoy the job description/word vomit.

Loves!

Stories of the North:

Here are some embarrassing stories/everyday life in the North.

Eating lunch and dinner in Senegal is a very great way to connect with someone, you don’t even have to talk to the person during the meal but sharing the food in the communal bowl means a lot to the Senegalese that you’d take the time to eat with them and enjoy their food. In my host family I eat lunch and dinner with my father, whose a very elderly, respected man in my village (being the village chief and all). My goal in my Peace Corps service is to win my father over, he’s very old and very distant; he tries to do the fatherly roles but he’s just so unaware of what’s happening it’s very hard for him to fulfill these roles. So I have it in my mind that I just need to keep trying to impress my father and he’ll be so happy that my service will be so easy and he’ll tell the family to behave a lil around me. We’re eating our lunch and of course it’s rice, a few veggies, and some lil fish which is strange because we normally have a pretty medium size fish, but these were ‘bait fish’, maybe 2 ½ inches long. My father throws me one in the bowl and I try to cut it up with my spoon and the whole time I’m watching him to see how he’s going to eat his…because I have yet to find any meat on these fish to pick off the bones and skin and eat.

He threw the whole fish in his mouth… and started to chew. Still staring at this fish and knowing I need to make a quick decision before I have my father scream --- eat! I quickly decide, why not? And I proceed by shoving the entire bait fish in my mouth and just start to chew, then the taste, texture, and bones got way too overwhelming and I decide, well swallow of course. So this half chewed and eatin fish is now slowly going down my esophagus and I’m thinking to myself, the eye balls were still in the fish- baaba I’m full. Went in my room chugged water, and remembered my vegetarian days.

Ear ache galore: (Not direct quotes)

I started having horrible ear aches, and I couldn’t hear out of my left ear. Everything was just so bizarre, when you have ear pain it slowly but surely spreads to your jaw and sinuses. This was just the beginning of the pain so I had assumed I just have something stuck in my ear, what would my mom do in this situation? My mom would put a piece of cloth over my ear and suck until she got the water out. Because the pain at first wasn’t bad I was able to experiment with cleaning my ear out with q-tips, putting water in it, anything of the sort. I told a few North Volunteers the technique my mom used to use; a light bulb started to flicker over Evan’s head – he brought me a straw and said “Okay I’m ready.” My laughter at the sheer thought of having someone I barely know attempt to suck whatever could possible be in my ear out (I mean, come on this is Africa) didn’t not deter his assistance. So I caved in put a cloth between my ear and the straw and he started to suck, I continuously laughed because it was A) doing nothing B) strange situation C) tickled, of course. So I did it to Evan so he knew what it felt like because that’s what friends do, then him and Maddy came up with another plan “what about a sudden burst of water I think that’s how they flush ears out” ------After that I got a water gun to the ear.

So a week later and I’m now in Dakar with more pain and different medication- no straws, and no water guns.

The Jump(s):

Traveling to and from my road is best done by charrette, walking is nice but the lack of shade on the path dehydrates you fast. I was heading back to my village after a nice trip to my road town Medina; I was sitting upon a donkey charrette driven by one of my favorite kid charrette drivers (the kids are my protectors) His mother is also my favorite person, and of course I don't know any of their names so I can't name drop them at this moment. So we're riding along and a storm decides to grace us with it's present, an intense rain storm that doesn't last too long but we're on a charrette and all the sand/clay turned into mud instantly. Everyone got off the charrette because it was too heavy, they wouldn't let me walk through the mud, so I stayed on the charrette with the lil kid (driver), and another woman with her baby. We're riding along and I'm holding on for dear life because I have a tendency to "fly" a little bit on the rough charrette roads-- now just add some mud in that and 2 stubborn donkeys. I jumped off the charrette 2 times into giant mud puddles; not on purpose out of fear of a tipping charrette. I was the only one with this fear!

Greetings readers,

Before I share any fun stories with you all I'd like to tell you about a little boy who lives in my village. I walk around my village every day and normally greet people along the way, there's one house that I barely know but the people have already shown me so much kindness. One day I was greeting people and I was having a bad day because the man who was suppose to water my pepinere would not do anything to help; I told this lady I didn't even know and she told me... "leave your bucket here and I'll water your pepinere for you, I'll make my daughter help."Mind you the person with the key to the gate is the man who refuses to water the pepinere so we have to jump the wall in order to water this pepinere.... This is the The boy is about 13 years old, and he's been confined to a wheelchair his whole life. He has outgrown his childhood wheelchair and would like to push himself to use an actual hand driven wheelchair. The boy and his parents say that he's dying to be able to use his hands. This little boy lays down under a tree everyday because he can't even leave his compound. I've emailed various non profit organizations who dedicate their time towards wheelchair distribution and technological advances asking for helping/assistance in tracking down a wheelchair for this child, I'd also like to ask anyone whose reading this blog for their assistance, knowledge, advice, anything and everything you can share :).

Updates:

Everything in village has been going really well! I have a completely new mindset when I'm village that has helped me stay sane. I'm not sweating the little things, and I'm not takings things as personal right now, granted this is a very new thing I've been experiencing, but for now it's working. Some days I know I'm not going to be to let the little things slide, and that's okay- that's normal and I need to embrace that I'm not the only one whose going through what I keep thinking I'm the only one whose ever been through that situation. My family situation in village has been really good, I realized I put too much pressure on this grand "family connection" and that my expectations were just not obtainable. I just had way too high of expectations and standards for my family to fulfill and that's not fair, and completely unobtainable seeing as I've only been in site for a few months. And yeah some other volunteers have this great connection with their family already, but everyone's different and I can't blame or myself for this.

I've been fasting, I broke fast 2 days -- because I got sick and so I had to break fast, and then one day I just broke because the next day I was leaving to Ndioum regional house and just broke, but it was cool cause some of my other friends broke that day too. So I've been in Ndioum since Monday just hanging out and trying to get some work done. It's been a nice break but I feel like I've just been on the computer the whole time trying to find as many resources as possible, and trying to track down documents, etc. I've been surrounded by great, fun, and amazing friends-- but been tied to a computer the whole time. At least work is getting done though :)

I'm gonna leave you guys with a small blog post now, and I'll update next time I have internet.

Loves,

Hadiel

p.s. i still love packages, letters, and mix cds. send me something!

Dakar is magical. It's not Senegal, I swear it's secretly America. Speaking of America; I'm at a club right now called Club Atlantique or as the volunteers call it Club America. There's internet, food, beer, books, tv, dvds, tennis courts, volley ball court, ping pong, SWIMMING POOL!, life guards, jungle gym, duty free....best of all it's free to get in if you're a pc volunteer!! Other people have to pay fees, but for some reason volunteers are exempt from the fees :).

I'm in Dakar for English camp. I'm working with 4 other volunteers to teach English to 14-16 year old students, for 6 days. We're working in Mbao which is just on the outskirts of Dakar, the camp is suppose to be for "underprivileged" kids, but my definition of underprivileged and the US Embassy's is very different, either way these kids deserve these classes. There are more English camp groups with other volunteers and different locations, so there are lots of volunteers staying at Dakar so everyday after class is an adventure!

Yesterday was our first day of class and it was kind of difficult to get them to loosen up, they were incredibly timid; didn't know who we were or what to expect from all of this. Today they were really energetic more daring to engage in conversation; I didn't hear as much French or Wolof and they would tell us "I don't understand" AMAZING! When we played pictionary we tried to explain to the students they don't need to raise their hand....but they wouldn't disobey that rule, they kept raising their hands; it's strange to think how ingrained their learning style is and how hard it is for them to break that familiarity. Their learning styles here are based on the old French influences, repetition, and memorization.

The kids are sooo great though, we played basketball for a little while today and there was the boy Michael (we gave them all English names because we all have Senegalese names) and he kept passing the basketball to girls on his team!!! It was amazing! The other guys on the other team refused to pass to the girls so a lot of them quit that team and sat down because they were frustrated, and we kept yelling at those guys but they wouldn't listen. It's frustrating when that stuff happens, also I think the 2 guys who wouldn't share the ball are about 18 years old; students here lie about their age a lot so they can stay in school and take the BAC- if they pass the BAC exam they can go to University. So good for them for staying in school and sticking through it; but share the ball, thank you. :)

I'll be returning to my village Sunday or Monday inchallah. I'm excited, but kind of nervous, I feel like I've lost some of my language skills, and I've been so out of village life, but I'm excited to return and get back to my grassroots life style. So August 17th is Ramadan, so I will not be starting any projects until after that; and even then my projects will be a slow process because my language skills wouldn't be up to par to explain all that needed to be explained. But during Ramadan nobody eats or drinks anything during the day (except old ppl, children, and pregnant women) they only eat before sunrise and after sunset, because of this reason no one can work so the month of August is going to be a very lazy month for me which will be nice I can concentrate on my language and organize myself. I want to try to fast for a few days, just to really get a feeling of what the villagers go through- if I get sick I'll quit doing it. And there's no way I can quit drinking water in this heat so I'll continue drinking water all day and just break fast with my family late at night or early in the morning.

That's all for now. There will be an ice cream adventure tonight, because there is real ice cream in Dakar. :)

Today's the last day. this is weird. I'm going to miss these people.

Also, Meera and I bought the best pants ever. Pictures to come.

what do you love most about your job?

i love that I can plant trees all the time, and that it's incredibly difficult to get the trees to survive in this environment, the number of opportunities that will arise from these trees. The teaching opportunities. The impact I'll have on the deforestation of the North. The income that can be generated from these trees. The fact that it might not work- and I'll have the learning experience.

Oh and the fact that I can do TONS of other projects in between all of this, but the feeling of having a tree survive in this environment is so rewarding.

Once again just as much has happened and it will be incredibly hard to update anyone whose still reading this, but I'll try my hardest. If you have questions feel free to ask them in the comment box and I'll get back to you; its easier for me to feed off of people's questions.

Right now I'm in Thies for my IST (in service training) for the next 2 weeks I'll be getting intensive training over the heavier projects I'll be doing in village. We'll be going over more in depth information; including how to write grants or the process we have to follow in order to submit our grants for our bigger projects, transplating/outplanting our tree pep, and so much more. It's really exciting to be back in Thies for IST which is surprising because it's really tiring, I have to wake up at 6am everyday and wait for my transportation at 6:30am (I'll be making the commute from my CBT site to Thies everyday- more on this later) after this I'll be in class from 8-5 everyday. Our breaks include breakfast, second breakfast, lunch rekk (only). It's comforting knowing that I'm doing something, I've been bored in site and I know that after these 2 weeks I'll be able to accomplish something, and dive into projects.

It's also scary that I'll be able to dive into projects, because I feel like there is still so much I don't know about my village and my language skills are not up to par to hold a meeting. Other volunteers give us advice including we aren't the ones who should be holding the meetings, it should be others in our community, like our counterparts. But I don't know if I can rely on my counterparts to do that in a manner that represents my work properly, they haven't really been proving themselves lately. But I'll be able to track down someone in the village who knows what the work of a Peace Corps volunteer really is and they'll help with the meetings, I have confidence this will work out properly as long as I plan for the worst and the best.

The greatest thing about the next 2 years are the skills and knowledge I'm going to be obtaining and sharing with others. I feel like I'm attempting to obtain so much information and resources so I can teach these people in order to make a truly sustainable project work without the "toubab" presence. (Toubab means white person). The hardest thing about the next two years is going to be making sure the projects are actually sustainable -- yikes!!

So I don't know what kind of stuff you guys are interested about hearing, stories of village life, stories of my work, etc. ask questions and i'll answer accordingly. Here's a story about my experience in the village just last week; don't judge you guys- just laugh.

I went to the school to go water the pepinere and of course was followed by a bunch of children, which is fine by me because they normally listen to me and help out with watering the trees. It's a fun time and they're really helpful and incredibly counterproductive but they have nothing better to do. Well it all went sour when the kids wouldn't turn off the water, and in their defense they were trying to water the other completely dead garden beds (that have been abandoned -- whole other story), anyways I kept asking them to turn off the water because we were done watering the trees, and for the past few days the robine hasn't been working so for "water saving" reasons I didn't want to use too much that day.

The kids wouldn't listen to me so I ran up to them and asked again to turn it off, and the kid just kept staring at me and laughing, which made me incredibly mad and I kept yelling and one kid finally came up and turned it off (i was on the other side of the fence). I was outraged that the kids wouldn't listen to me at that moment, one of my fears in the village is to have the children disregard my authority and having to call in an adult because the adults just hit the kids which then the kids hate me and will destroy my work- fact. Anyways I screamed at the kids to go home because I was tired of their behavior, they wouldn't listen kept laughing, etc. An adult heard and told them to leave; thank god (this rarely happens).

So the next day I go to water the pepinere and I'm a little nervous I'm going to run into those kids again and do some damage control so they don't hate me because of my outrageous reaction. All was good but some of the kids started throwing rocks at the school (to kill a lizard- I hate it when they do this) they kept hitting the school building and taking chunks out of the wall. So of course I tell them they can't be at the school and that the building is not there's to destroy and they'll have to pay for the damage. They thought once again I'm so funny!!

Some kids of course were sticking up for what I was saying and were telling the kids they should run away before I hit them - All the kids here think adults just beat children, because that's what they know - I've told them I don't hit kids so they know they've got that cushion and they can misbehave and not get punished. (P.S. one boy kept his distance cuz he was scared, and the other kid was the same one who was playing with the water the day before) BUT! This time I told them I'd tell my father, all the kids in the village are scared of my father, so I asked one of the little girls what the boys' names were and if she'd come to my house to assist me, one of the boys heard and came up to hit her, so I stand in front of her and yell at him again that he can never hit a girl and that I'll tell his mother and she'll beat him. He responds, if you come to my house my mother will beat you. Oh hail no!

So here I am, 22 years old, arguing with 10 year olds about their behavior in a language I can't even speak. This is not what I expected for my Peace Corps experience. Let's just say everything was resolved because an older boy (16years) came up and calmly soothingly asked "Penda, what's wrong? Talk to me" So I told him the issue and that I was going to tell my father, and he didn't really understand what I was saying so this little girl came up and told him in her much better Pulaar, the older boy turned to the younger boy and told him to stop tormenting me and that he shouldn't break the school and that he'll beat him himself if he continues. It sounds horrible but it was really reassuring knowing SOMEONE will stick up for me whose older than 8 years old, because only ONE ADULT came up when I was screaming at the kids and all he said was "stop," then went home; really sir? whose that helping?! So this older boy told me to go home and tell my father and I told him I didn't want to have to do that, I turned to the younger boy and told him to promise he wouldn't go into the school and I wouldn't tell my father. Later on that day I went up to the kid and asked if we were still friends (if he's already behaving that way I need to make sure we're friends so he doesn't do these things to my future projects) so we shook hands about our friendship, and he said sorry. All in all it was completely resolved.

So about homestay during IST, I went back to my CBT site in N'Guekhov but I couldn't stay with my family because the father had passed away and everything has been really hard on them, so I stayed with the family that our language teacher stayed with, which is totally fine because I knew the family and we had class there everyday. Also, there's a little boy there Omar, and he only talks to me. He used to tell the family that he wouldn't speak to anyone until I came over to their house (this was when my language teacher still lived there), but his behavior wasn't any different when I was staying there. I'm now staying at the Thies Peace Corps compound with all the other volunteers, except the ones who decided they wanted to keep going to their CBT house, I just couldn't do it because of traveling back and forth. The road was way too hard on my body; I got motion sickness and was taking motion sickness pills every morning and evening for the trips. The volunteers were able to convince Peace Corps staff that we'll be responsible enough to stay at the Thies compound and won't disobey the rules. The reason PC staff doesn't want us to stay at the Thies compound is because other stages had ruined it for everyone else, because they got drunk on compound grounds, would skip classes, or come back to the compound really late. But the volunteers brought up their issues with us not staying on compound grounds and how it was stressful for us all, etc. So now we're able to stay here which is awesome but I had to say goodbye to the family one more time, which sucked because I really do like these families in N'Guekhov, like more than my village family. I didn't realize how good I had it during CBT compared to now. My "real" CBT family welcomed me with hugs and kisses, and everyone was soooo happy to see me. One little boy, my little man was bailing when they had to pull him out of my arms and it was my last goodbye until I'm able to come back and visit then later in my service. But still, what if he's not there?-- This little boy is my buddy! They were so sad I wasn't going to be able to stay with them because of the death that struck.

Alright so I think this is a pretty good update. I'll try to start writing some things to post more frequently while in village.

Loves!

oh p.s. i went to a restaurant today with some friends and there was LIVE music, and the man was singing in english and it was some good english songs, and it made me think of people in America.

A lot has happened I'm going to try my hardest to give you guys the updates you deserve.

I saw camels on my charrette ride to Medina (my rotown - meaning the bigger town with electricity that I can buy stuff at) this was incredibly exciting, and everyone on the charrette thought I was crazy because of my child like squeal.

Actually, I think a lot of people in my village think I'm a lil off because of my adventurous side. I want to try to do everything everyone else is doing, if the children are playing soccer I'm jumpin' in, if the women are dancing I'm right there with them. Our morning greeting is Jam waali, so you have to do the long a sound.... I greet people the same way Eva says wall-e on the movie Wall-E. Nobody!! within 3 hours of my village would even know about that, or nobody in the Futa would know about the movie Wall-E. So the children make fun of me thinkin' I can't pronounce jam waali, and I get to reference a Disney movie at 7am.

There's a wolof phrase some pulaar people say as well, but it's mainly big city pulaar people who know it because of the influence of wolof. It's "Ada heewi banken yanken", it means you're tempermental--or materialisitic. I kind of made up my own meaning for this phrase; I learned it because my sister in my CBT site told me to tell it to my brother because he was mean to me. Now I say it to anyone who pisses me off/people who repetitively ask me for money. I said it to my sister in law in my new village because she's sassy and at times a bully to me, after I said it I was a little nervous I had offended her but they didn't know what it meant and the only way I could explain it was, "she's got a lot of problems" they thought it was hilarious, everyone who came over heard the story. Now everyone in my village says this phrase and only one woman actually knows what it means because she's Wolof; the great thing is no one can pronounce it right so I have people come up and say ada heewi bankdan dandan, and it's my responsibility to make sure they pronounce it correctly because my ada heewi banken yanken revolution must be executed properly.

Um, I just got done having my language class it was bout 3 days long in Podor where Paul and Maddy live, they housed us for the language class it was amazing seeing other volunteers! The best part was sharing stories of everything we've all been through and what projects we've started. The projects we've all started are like baby projects because we can't apply for grants yet.

So far I've started my pepinere, I have to do 500 tree sacks before IST which is in July and I've accomplished half so far. I started seeding one of them a few weeks ago so hopefully my niece actually watered the pep; she's been a brat lately and just keeps askin' me for things so I yelled at her, she knows better she needs to stop. Actually my whole family keeps askin' me for things and I talked to my dad before I left that they need to stop and he seemed pretty respective to my speech; but I don't know how much he understood. I'm a little nervous about my family situation; I think they don't want another volunteer living there because they've already had 2. We're really close and their amazing but it's not what I would consider a "family." But I've won the hearts of a lot of the people in my village including my family members- so my whole village will be my family.

Except I yelled at a teacher the day before I left to Podor...I dunno if I can post details about this online, but let's just say I stick up for what I believe in and my word is everything to me. My ultimate goal here is to make something sustainable. If I've noticed something didn't work out with the other volunteers I'm not repeating that project, for example my family has always had a huge garden and they cook with the veggies and they sell 'em in Medina to make money. The first volunteer had a large one once she went home it died. Second volunteer had a large one and it died as well. They asked me to do one and I asked someone once I go home if it'll die and they said yes because I wont be there to take care of it....hm, why would I do it then? If it's going to crumble and fall once I leave I can't do it. I can't justify the project in my head because of this reason. Instead we're doing a woman's garden because they'll be generating such a profit they'll be purchasing their own seeds and it's their way of business. SOLD! Once I can start writing grants we're going to figure out what we need to do to get this done.

This blog post is incredibly jumpy and scattered I apologize but I don't have much time to write it all out because I need to leave to my village today so I wont have internet in a long time unless I can track down a cyber cafe in Medina.

For the 4th of July I'm traveling down to Kedegou for their 4th of July party, which will be amazing but Ked is the Southern most part of Senegal and I'm in the North; tiring! After 4th of July I return to my village and a few weeks later I've got IST. After IST the big projects will be starting hopefully! Right now everything seems like it's really slow but I don't have the language skills or the hang of the village just yet.

Gotta go,

Loves!

Greetings Friends and others who’ve come across this blog! A lot has happened since my last blog post. I’ve been in Senegal for 2 months and it already feels like I’ve been here for years. The Peace Corps does an incredible job facilitating us to be as well adapted to the Senegalese culture as possible. Before I decided to sign up for the Peace Corps I remember people talking about how the volunteers do nothing; they just go to foreign counties and start a girls soccer team-- we do so much more than that (and also those girls soccer teams do a lot for the girls in developing countries). For now I can’t really speak about what I will be doing project wise because I haven’t gone to my village yet and I haven’t asked them what the issues in the village are. But we do have a project plan of things we need to accomplish; such as Environmental Education volunteers need to do 500 tree sacks (pepineeres) and so much more!! but that's one I'm incredibly excited for because tomorrow I'm going on a seed scavenger hunt. They’re changing their ways so they have more things to measure at the end of services particularly in the year 2015. I feel really fortunate for how well our training has been organized; and that's saying a lot because there are still times where we find ourselves thinking Peace Corps is not organized at all, but in all reality they did an amazing job at changing their training styles to better accommodate us to have an easy/smooth transition period through everything.

The previous volunteers said they were never given the opportunity to visit their future site while they were in training; so they were in these amazing training houses and then the day they were installing into their future site was the hardest because they realized their hut was smaller, they had no electricity, they were really far from the roads/city/houses, etc. But we were able to get a preview of our future life, walk around with the volunteer, find out the hot spots, hear the gossip, know who to avoid, etc.

So training comes to an end this Saturday; that's when we go to Dakar and get sworn in as real volunteers. It's a pretty formal ceremony, which I'm really excited for. It's scary but I'm excited! I had my last language test (may 11) and I think it went pretty well. I have to score intermediate mid, which means I have to be able to engage in conversation, ask questions, and get my ideas across -- would you like me to be more vague?! :) But I really think I did pretty good, I think I reached that goal, which is also kind of scary because I feel like I have no language ability and if I did reach that goal then it's scary to think I'm going to be able to survive on my own for the next few months with the little language skills I have. But once again, once you're actually doing this stuff you realize how much you can actually handle. That's the most exciting thing about this process the fact that no matter what's thrown at me I can handle it. I've always known I could, but now here's the proof. I'm putting myself in a completely different situation than I would ever put myself in, and I can do this. I'm learning more about myself, and I'm also learning how to not be scared to be the goofy person I am in public. (Cheesy-- I know). It's just fun being around the Senegalese people! It's funny how in America if you're dancing "weird" people mock you, but in Senegal if you're not dancing, you're mocked! They're all about having fun! I feel like sometimes that's forgotten in America because people are always so nervous about what others are going to think.

I'll update more later, but I just wanted to give you guys a brief update so everyone is kind of caught up to speed. If you have questions post 'em in the comments and I can answer them!

Love

Hadiel

Please note the new address. I'll be at this site starting May 20th if all goes well. Assuming I'll be passing my language exam on Tuesday; if not then I'll be there May 27th.

B.P. 16

Medina Ndiatbe

Senegal

West Africa

This address is posted on the side of my blog as well. If you've sent things to my old address; no worries I'll still be able to get the mail in August when I come back to Thies for training!

I enjoy all mail; and I apologize it takes so long to send letters back but keep sending letters I appreciate all of the letters!! And I will send yours soon promise!

Love,

Hadiel

So all is good here in Senegal. It's still incredibly crazy that I'm here and of course I have my really good days and my incredibly horrible days where I don't understand anything that people are attempting to communicate to me. Which is the worst, actually the worst is when I can't pronounce anything in the language I'm learning. But honestly I wouldn't have it any other way, well except for the part that I could at least pronounce the words correctly.

I found out I'm learning the hardest language here, and I love that because any other language here would be incredibly easy. But I also want to learn French because I feel like that's going to be really beneficial in areas that don't speak my language or even large causeries in larger villages where not everyone speaks Pulaar; and I feel like more health workers would respect me more if I spoke French because it's a language associated with the people's level of education because all the schools are taught in French. (This is totally my personal opinion and I'll find out for sure once I get to my site and start workin' with the health workers)

Anyways, I'm really enjoying myself here and I'm going to be a real volunteer May 16th I believe, that's when we swear in as VOLUNTEERS since we're just trainees right now. It's a really long process of how things are done and I'll write a blog completely detailing it out. I've been attempting to post videos that I've done of like tours of compound and my homestay but our internet is way too slow here and it wont load. Inshallah it'll be online.

For all my friends out there following this, I love getting mail. Lately I've been getting soliciting mail from our Idaho candidates who want my absentee vote to go towards them. Now all the other volunteers are afraid of going to Idaho because of these postcards/letters from the candidates. I guess everyone else doesn't get postcards of the candidate saying how he's going to fight back against Obama and reinstate our 2nd amendment. Neat! People now come up to me and ask me stories about Idaho so they don't wish they were back in America. hahahah yet I bet all of them are gonna come visit me in Idaho because Idaho's mountains and outdoorsy activities are way too good to pass up.

Shout out to Destinie sorry girl the power went out for a little while and our internet stayed down, but your haircut is adorable!! Congrats girl it must have been so hard cutting off all that hair!

Gretch- Just act; think later.

Mom- stop asking me to come home. :) love you!!

Huda- tell Layla I got her smiley face! I'll post a pic soon of me and the picture u drew.

My crazy story of the day:

I'm in Thies today and Thies is a pretty big city, the market is incredibly intimidating because we've got children asking us for money (they're called talibes I'll give you more details about that later- that'll be a long post) and people are trying to get us to come look at their stuff. You really can't shop in peace and I normally try to just walk as fast as possible and I don't do much shopping except at the taobob store because everything has a set price and no bargaining is needed. Well today I wanted to get fabric it's called Mayloose (i believe) it's from Mauritania and it's incredibly nice to have in the Futa because it's so freakin' hot. So I found one lady who looked really chill - she didn't speak Pulaar but understood what I was attemping to say; she was trying to talk to me in French but because my French just isn't good enough and it might do more damage than good I stuck to Pulaar, but my friend Meera is fluent and she was with me so if I needed help it was available. SO ultimately I bought the fabric didn't have to bargain even though I tried because she didn't know how many meters I was buying but she was like - I'm not trying to rip you off, this is the set price. (UM amazing!! We call the tax here Taobob tax, because we're white they jack everything up for us...when in all reality we really don't have much money- in comparison to them yes but it sucks getting ripped off when our money has to go an incredibly long way for us)

So after that successful journey I went to buy a dress that was already made it's this really cool loose fitting dress and i love it; I talked to the wife and husband in pulaar forever come to find out the husband's relatives live in Aram (my future site) and he called his relative asked if they knew my future dad in Aram then got my dad's number and called him to say Hi- I'm standing with your daughter. It was adorable!! And I got a dress from him and it was only 3500 when my friend bought the same dress from someone else and they told her it was 10,000 and she had to bargain down to 5,000 i believe maybe less. But they told me 4,000 and I thought they said 8,000 cuz my french numbers suck and I was like damn I don't have enough, then they went down and my friend Meera translated and told me they were saying 3,500. haha genius!! this is why i don't speak to people in French. I mess up my numbers and I always almost pay too much: yes this has happened before.

Anyways, love ya'll and I will write you soon and email you back soon I promise! xoxo

haa gonngol.

I've just been listening to She & Him wishing I owned their newest cd, or could download it but the internet is way too slow for that!

I got my site today!! I'm so excited and yet incredibly nervous and I have no clue what to expect about my site. I'm going to Aram which is in the north right by Mauritania and it's incredibly conservative but there is a river there so I'll be swimming quite a bit- but I hear you have to wear pants when you swim because knee's and ankles can't be seen, granted this is what I've heard and all of this is subject to change once I get up there and see for myself. Which I should be doing that next week I believe. Tomorrow I leave for my CBT site for 3 days then I come back to Thies then our Village Visits - I think. I'll meet the girl I'm replacing once I go on my village visit too.

So far I've had an incredibly large amount of seminars, tests, classes, hands on experience etc. etc. I've made a mudstove in my site with my fellow group members (bout 3 others), made a community map, and actually grew things in our school's garden!! We painted a mural at the school but they're on vacation so we can't get into the classroom right now, but insha'allah.

I'll post more details bout the site after the visit! And I'll post pictures soon, I forgot my charger at my families house.

This is a post that I typed at by CBT site. April 2nd:

So these last 12 days haven’t been as hard as everyone said it would be; but there have still been some hard days. Its as if sometimes the language just clicks and other days I’m so tempted to just lock myself in my room and scream! It gets really hard when people just come over to my compound to mock me or laugh at the crazy taobob who has no clue what they’re saying. Sometimes it's hard to laugh at yourself after you're incredibly tired from language class, the heat, and being constantly busy; but 2 minutes later something amazing happens and you forget all about your worries.

So breakdown of whose living in my compound:

sister)Awa - her 2 daughters absa & lena (she’s married to a maribou but lives in our compound)

sister Aicha - 17

brother Mohammed -14

sister Miyrum - 12

brother Gebby - his 2 sons elij & ibrahim- I think I met one of his wives today…I’m not positive though

brother Jom - I don’t even know if this is his name.

One other brother I forgot his name…

Some lady I don’t know her name but her kid Mohammed LOVES me. I want to keep him.

brother Abdou- his daughter Abbi

My 3 moms - Binta, Miyrum, Ramatat

My baaba

Me!!

*No one’s wives live in our compound… I think my brothers might just be here to work and take care of my baaba or they’re looking for new wives. I don’t know what’s going on and I wouldn’t understand their responses so I don’t ask.

Story involving my niece: Abbi whose about 4 years old, tried to beat up a 2 year old for shaking my hand because she doesn’t want to share me and doesn’t like it when other kids want to play with me. So I literally held Abbi back while she was going at this kid full force.

Oh by the way I also live right next to a mosque and the mosques here have surround sound speakers that they blare the prayers on which is soooo loud and theres a feedback noise cuz it’s too loud for the speakers. And I'm in the middle of the market around the corner from my house is the market. So not only are the children pretty intense, the location of my compound is pretty intense as well.

To give you guys a brief overview of my language here are the greetings in Pulaar -- you have to say this in the entirety….

Asalamalakum

-Malkum Salam

No mbad-daa?

-Jam tan

Ada selli?

-Mowdum

No mbadu-daa e ngulaaki?

-Mowdum

No mbadu daa e tempere

-Mowdum

No mbadu daa e golle?

-Mowdum

No galle maa wadi?

-Ebey jam

No baaba maa wadi?

-Omoy jam

No neena maa wadi?

-Omoy jam

No gorko/debbo maa wadi?

-Omoy jam

That’s the greeting. It’s normally mumbled and you’re just responding fine and peace only. Then you can get into the real business of the conversation. I normally just stop at ada selli and my family tries to make me continue but honestly no one is listening, by the way this is a very fast back and forth thing so I could be asking someone these questions and they’ll be asking me at the same time. It’s messy. I normally try to throw a ahumdallah in there after I ask no galle maa wadi to show the people I’m amazing.

Kill record of bugs in my room is 3. But it’s so hot here the cockroachs die just by being in my room so including the cockroachs I didn‘t physically kill I‘ve got 7. And honestly killing 3 bugs aint bad- my room is amazing, one girl had a mouse in her bag and another had a giant rat running around her compound.

Today is my first day with internet access and I feel like I have so much to write about but no energy to write about it. So I apologize for the details I'll be leaving out or the epic post that this will become.

First off, my new Senegalese name is Mymoona (Munas for short) Jallo. That's written phonetically because I don't know how to spell it. It's beautiful though, Mymoona is like name the older women will go by, and Munas is for teenagers but I like it when ppl say My moon a. It makes me feel special.

Last Sunday I found out I'll be speaking Pulaar du Nord which doesn't help me figure out where I'm going to be placed at all because the language is spoken everywhere the north and south...neat. Oh and it's spoken all the way through Chad so I'm golden to be a translator for any potential travelers! So I had my language course on Sunday then Monday afternoon I left to go live with a family that speaks Wolof, Pulaar and a few of them speak French. Let's just say I feel like no one in my family knows how to play charades because instead of acting out the words when i was confused they just said it louder and faster. Which was frustrating but really not that bad. I feel like if I can accomplish this I can do anything in life. It was actually a really great time! I was only there for 5 days and now I'm back in Thies for more training and some tests, I leave Wednesday for N'Guekov (where my family lives) and I'll stay there for 12 days which will be the longest consecutive time I'll stay with my family and then I come back to Thies again for more training.

My days in N'Guekov:

Wake up around 7:30 (more so around 7 because of the praying and my house is right in the middle of the market...p.s. i hate goats!!! they're so loud and obnoxious)

Get ready for the day go out to this lady's shed where she sells breakfast while being escorted by my family members and they buy me breakfast. Then my friend Samba (american name = paul) comes to pick me up and we walk to Sakir's house (where he's living in N'Guekov. Sakir is my teacher and he's staying with a host family too.) Then we have about a 3-4 hour language class. Go home take a nap eat lunch, back to Sakir's house. We all live within 5 minutes from each other. Then we go to the school and work on our garden. Come home, hang out with my fam try to do homework (and fail miserably), eat dinner, my fam watches tv and i just let my older sister read my pulaar book to me because she gets happy when she helps me! I don't really obtain anything but they just get so happy when they're helping me and it's better having her read something to me that has the english translation next to it (I've tried telling her that everything is in english too but i don't think they understand so i make her act it out so once they say that word i'll know what actions they'd do) It's better to have them read it to me than getting pulaar screamed at me and then french screamed at me and ppl saying "she doesn't understand anything!!" in french and me just laughing.

In between all of this Im chasing the kids that only speak wolof so we don't understand each other but they love me. Also, I've had 2 people ask me if I want their kid. My little niece Abbi is this lil spoiled girl who I adore!! She falls asleep in my lap at night. It's adorable. I love her! I was so sad I didn't get to say bye to her when I left for Thies. :(

SO everything is going really well and I'm having the time of my life! I really need to work on my French though! So now I'm gonna study and do some homework, but I've posted some pix and videos! I took awkward videos of some pc trainees I'm here with take a look! They're quite funny!

Jam tan.

Mymoona Jallo/Hadiel Mohamed

I just finished my staging orientation about a half hour ago, it was a long and educational 7 hour orientation. It was really good to go through even the cheesy ice breakers, it all helped. It's just nice to be reminded that everyone has the same fears and anxieties as I do. I mean once I get there I know everything is going to be okay, I don't feel like I'm worried about Senegal. I'm worried for my family; I feel like I'll be missing them and that they wont be affirmative when I call and say "wow i'm fed up i wanna come home" and they say "okay, come home" when what I want to hear is "no, you have to stay cause tomorrow is a different day" and I know I'll come to that point where I might want to give up, it's like hitting that wall. I just need to remind myself I can do this, and this is what I need to do for myself and for others. It's weird, but I don't feel scared of Senegal at all... which might be changing once I get there and see just how big the spiders are, but really I'm just nervous bout whether or not I'll be placed near another volunteer, I think it'd be nice and convenient to be placed near someone else.

Anyways, during staging we gave them our completed forms, went over the expectations and the policies of the peace corps had some nice fun ice breakers, group work, poster making, drawing with scented markers. Haha it sounds horrible when I put it like that, but each group made a poster of our anxieties and aspirations and we presented that and just about everyone had the same things down.

Last night I think I went through the worst emotional roller coaster; first off it's weird but once again I'm the only Arab - minority still?! weird. Only one who hasn't lived in another country for more than a month, actually this could be false i haven't asked everyone. Only one from Idaho, not surprising, but only a few people have ever been to Idaho which sucks because everyone else is talkin' about their friends that went to the same college as everyone else or they all lived in the same state/city, etc. And the whole time I'm like no we don't have a lot of potatoes, its the state with the blue turf.... So I guess it's been connecting with the other volunteers that I'm most nervous about. But honestly today has been a much better day, I went out to a little cafe today got coffee and a bagel and noticed a picture of David Beckham hanging on the wall when he went to that same coffee shop and just realized: somethings are just meant to be. And I'm just meant to be in the Peace Corps going to Senegal. And I'm doing this for the Senegalese people, my social life doesn't really matter at the time being so if I don't become best buds with any of the volunteers today or tomorrow it'll happen eventually and that's not what I need to be thinking about because if it's meant to be it's meant to be. Yup, David Beckham's picture taught me that much. Oh and it meant we both have really good taste in lil dive coffee shops and that we should get married. but that might be reading way too much into it.

Back to the main point, yesterday and last night I was incredibly scared. INTENSELY scared. I feel like the last time I felt like that was when I was a child and I went to camp and missed my mom. I wanted to go home and just never admit I was accepted into the peace corps just turn back, but at the same time I knew I would never do that. I just needed to cry; just let it all out because i hate bottling everything in! I almost broke down when my friend Gretchen asked me on the phone if I was alright, and then I kept trying to say yes i am but my voice was cracking so i just said hmmhmm.. which was totally a clue that i was about to cry. But that night I talked to my roommate; and it was just refreshing to hear someone else tell me everyone is feeling the same way. It felt nice to have that connection with someone and be able to talk to someone about what I was feeling and they were going through the same thing. But today I just felt so relieved, I knew everything was going to be okay.

That's right mom, everything is going to be okay. :)

Tomorrow I leave at 8:30 to go to the clinic to get my immunizations, arrive at the clinic at 10, get my shots, go to the airport, depart at 5:40 pm. YAY!!! I'm so excited! Senegal here I come!

I'm almost done packing up my room and all my belongings around the house. I have enough stuff unpacked to entertain me and make sure I don't smell for a week. I also started packing my bags and I'm getting a little more organized now, I have a basket full of things I need to pack!

So far here is my packing list; I'll be editing this and once I arrive in Senegal I'll comment on the items I packed.

Clothing:

6 t-shirts (2 professional)/ 3 camis + 2 ribbed tanks/ 4 tank tops (2 professional)/ 1 long sleeve shirt

1 maxi dress/ 1 "going out" dress/ 1 maxi skirt

1 rain jacket

1 hat/ 2 bandanas

5 prs socks/ 15 prs underwear/ 6 bras/ 2 sports bras

1 short sleeve cardigan

1 pr pajama pants

1 pr jeans/ 2 prs gauchos/ 1 pr capri/ 2 cargo pants (I think I have too many pants)

1 pr exercise shorts/ 1 biking shirt/ 1 workout shirt

2 swimsuits (1 bikini, 1 tankini)

1 scarf (i really like scarfs so this was more of a comfort item)

jewelry

Chacos/Hiking shoes/Dress shoes

Equiptment:

Swiss Army knife

Petzl headlamp

2 carabiners

bungee cords

2 tsa combination locks

battery powered alarm clock

bike light

crank flashlight

2 water bottles

Solio solar charger & adapters (i decided against getting a solar charger strong enough to charge the netbook because the netbook's battery life is amazing)

appropriate chargers for my electronics (i had to get a car charger for my camera so I can charge it with the solar charger because the li-ion battery needs a charging dock and I'm not anticipating having frequent access to electricity)

adapter & converter plug (to charge my items at the regional house)

light sleeping bag

1 full flat sheet/ 1 full fitted sheet

1 pillow

Electronics:

Asus eee pc 1005-pe (this netbook advertises it's 14 hour battery life)

netbook fan (hopefully this will prevent problems with the battery)

Energizer usb battery charger

Eneloop power pack solar charger and batteries (i got this because it was an amazing deal for how many batteries are in the pack. i'll probably take this battery charger too because it got good reviews but it doesn't charge via usb port)

Olympus digital camera/ extra battery/ car charging dock/ extra memory card

Zune

Asus external optical drive (this will be perfect to back up my files from my netbook)

thumbdrives

Kitchen stuff:

Cookbook

tupperwares: 2 flat, 2- 2 qt. square, 2 lrg. cups, 2 small cup

coffee (starbucks via & ground coffee)

knife sharper

zip-lock bags

tea

cinnamon hard candy

gum

water flavoring packets

good kitchen knife & peeler

spices

Fun stuff/Entertainment:

DVDs (i bought a cd binder and put my dvds in there and filled a lot of the slots with blank dvd-rw so I can back up my pictures)

Books (i hear you shouldn't bring too many so I tried really hard to limit myself...which has been really hard: Mudoc, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, The Little Prince (in French hopefully this helps me learn), Into the Wild, Catcher in the Rye, Shadow of the Wind, Guide for the Perplexed, Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty, and When Elephants Weep. -- I also downloaded free books online and saved them onto a thumbdrive.)

The Way of Islam (my parent's have high hopes.)

Daily Yoga book

French textbook/ French dictionary

To decorate my wall: fav. band poster/ map of the world

2 journals + 1 my "List Notebook."

address book

photo album

deck of cards/ phase 10

Office Supplies:

pen/paper

accordion style binder

mini sapler & staples/ various clips

1 school style notebook/1 pocket moleskin notebook

folder

duct tape/ super glue/ packing tape

U.S. stamps

Planner

Toiletries:

4 toothbrushes (thanks Dr. Cutler)/ 3 traveler toothpaste (thanks dr. c)/ floss

2 pr prescription glasses

1 year supply disposable day & night contacts/ saline solution; eye drops/ contact cases

2 pr sunglasses (1 cheapo pair & a nicer pair)

2 deodorant sticks (my mom also bought me perfume so others will be more comfortable around me.)

small mirror

twizzers/ Parissa wax strips/ disposable razors

1 extra large pack towel/ 1 small pack towel

small lotion/ sunscreen

small hand sanitizer

hair ties, hair bands, clips, the works.

hair scissors

chapstick

condoms

antihistamine lotion

tampons/ the keeper

1 bottle vitamins

some makeup

3 month supply of prescriptions

Gifts:

Crazy 8's/ Go Fish

Crayons/ coloring books

soccer ball

frisbee

knickknacks

Requirements:

18 passport size photos

PC paperwork/ book/ copies of my documents, etc., etc.

What I'm carrying it all in:

REI Venus 75 backpack

Roller duffel bag

Dakine school backpack as carry on

*Restrictions: Carry on total= 80 pounds, combined dimensions 107"

*Title is "You! Me! Dancing!" - Los Campesinos!

Oh goodness. I feel like I'm already such a mess. I'm already packing for Senegal. I don't leave for 2 more months, I know I'm crazy. I've justified my premature packing issue though (that sounds quite sexual). It's so then I can box up all my summer clothes--cause I sure as hell wont be wearing any of it in the next two months. Damn you winter.

I have no clue what I'm packing but I'm combining lists I've been finding online of what others packed and what they wished they would have packed. Actually--I say I'm doing that, but I'm just shoving things in a bag that I wanna take. hahah! Then I'll check the lists.

Anyways I think I'm getting kind of stressed with packing because I'm finding all of my summer clothes, but they're not as "conservative" as they probably should be. I heard we shouldn't take tank tops, but I'm reading on others blogs that it's not a problem to wear tank tops in Senegal. I'm also nervous about the tank tops that will show my back tattoo. I feel like because it's in Arabic some people might get offended. Of course I'm thinking way too into this.

List of my questions:

What is considered inappropriate attire for women?

Spaghetti strapped tanks yay-or nay?

What kind of clothing is considered "professional"?

Will my tattoos be a problem?

Has anyone had any problems with their contacts? I know they recommend wearing glasses instead of contacts.

How hard is the language test you take after training? (I'm nervous about my French being up to par)

After training do all the volunteers live with host families?

Any advice, recommendations, favors, etc?

This is my first time posting on here, and I'm slowly realizing I have no talent for online social networks, i.e. facebook so bare with me. haha

So I recently got accepted to the Peace Corps!! Which is the most exciting thing that could possibly happen in my life. I'll be leaving for Senegal in March which is just 3 months away!!! Amazing right?! I'm really nervous, and super excited. I have to admit December has been the most amazing month for me! I graduated December 17th, and I did it in 4 years, I know that's not uncommon but I'm really proud of myself, I got accepted to the Peace Corps December 17th, then Christmas, which is always exciting because I love Christmas songs. And my birthday is in January, the big 22! I feel like everything is falling into place and I don't know what is going to happen next and I'm so excited to find out.

So my time-line with the Peace Corps; this is what helped me when I was applying and waiting so I hope anyone who google searches their questions and this site pops up it helps out. I submitted my application in June, from there I was contacted by a recruiter who was really helpful with all my questions. We scheduled my phone interview July 15th (some people have in person interviews this is determined by location I'm assuming). My recruiter went out of town a few days later so she said someone else would contact me stating I'm nominated, this never happened but I was set up with a application tool kit account that you can check the status of your application and this stated I was nominated and I'd be receiving a medical kit to be completed. Once she got back in town and called me I had already received the medical kit so we were able to talk about that which was nice having the kit and direct questions based on it. I was originally nominated for Community Development in Sub-Sahara Africa. Community development because of my degree, I had previous volunteer experience all over the board, but majority of it wasn't for a long period of time that I could be classified as an 'expert' or advanced in the material.

So I completed the medical kit, which actually took me quite a while and I fedex'd it to the office because I was worried it took too long. I sent it to them towards the end of August. It was hard to schedule my appointments and I had to go to a different doctor for a few, especially the gyno because mine was booked for months which isn't unusual. I had a lot of my immunizations and some I didn't understand and I had difficulty tracking places down in Idaho that actually gave them out so that was frustrating. I received a letter from the medical review a few weeks later saying I was missing information, something about the medication I currently use. It was easier to just go to the doctor's office with the form then calling, so that was my trick durin this whole process. Oh and my dermatologist was out of town too so I had to deal with some other man who didn't know anything about my issues so that was also hard.

P.S. the medical examination is intense. But the doctors are really understanding and I got a discount or not charged on a lot of things because they were so proud of me. Honestly once you tell people it's for the Peace Corps their eyes just brighten and they're so supportive it was so encouraging.

After this part they'll let you know if there are any problems or if you're cleared to work in any environment. I was cleared, then transferred to a placement officer. I called the placement officer after a few weeks, this is the part that normally takes a while because they have so many applications to review and it's done by the the time period you're nominated for. So people were leaving in January and they were reviewing those applications. I called the placement officer and she said I'd begin getting mine reviewed in a few weeks, we were into late October at this time. The PO told me to submit my updated volunteer resume and this will help so then they wont have to contact me again and just go straight through the review. I heard back in late November stating they needed my new transcript stating that I graduated and my degree conferral. I still haven't been able to get this to them because my school will not post this until January 10th.

December 18th they updated my application online stating Congratulations you've been invited you'll be receiving your invitation soon it has been sent out December 17th! I received my invitation and information December 24th, and I was nervous that because you have 10 days to get back to them to accept or decline the invitation that with the holidays I wouldn't be able to accept in time. My PO emailed me today (Dec 27) that I actually had 10 days once I RECEIVE the package so that was reassuring. The packet tells you about the country and the day you'd leave, information about your project or at least what you're doing. So I was nominated for community development and I got accepted to do Environmental Education and Preventive Health.

Between the nomination and invitation process I was volunteering with different non profits to be more competitive. Specifically I started to volunteer with a non profit HIV/AIDS awareness agency. The non profit did free testing for the community. I plan on staying with the agency until I leave for Senegal.

I found a page on facebook for other peace corps volunteers who I'll be going to Senegal with so thats comforting.

Alright. That is my first post/novel. Enjoy!