I am mildly tired of writing about my projects, so I will instead give you a little anecdote for today. A few days ago, I was biking back from Toubacouta where I had been using the internet in one of the hotels there to write one of my grants. I biked through one random village, and a group of kids started yelling “Toubab!”and running after my bike. This is an entirely normal occurrence, but one kid specifically actually reached my bike and started grabbing the back of it and running with it, which really annoyed me. This again wasn’t entirely out of the ordinary, but on this particular day it just irked me, and I turned around and screamed that he was a “bleepity bleep” that I will not repeat here because unlike that little kid, you will all understand what I am saying. The weird part was, the kid looked at me and shouted what I had just called him right back at me, not knowing what he was saying. Hearing that little kid say it was a little jarring and sort of brought me back, but I still needed to get him off my bike, so I sped up as much as I could and eventually he let go, but it still just reminded me how difficult of a situation you can be put in when you’re a complete outsider. Things like that never occur in my village because everyone there is used to me and knows my name, but the problem with being here is that you don’t just sit in your village forever; you have to travel on occasion and go to places where people don’t know your name. Everyone has a way of dealing with it, but some days you just lose it. In other news, in case you are as disconnected from the world as I sometimes find myself, today is the superbowl. I will not be watching it in real-time, but being a Patriots fan I cannot reasonably let it go without doing anything, so a group of us are getting together at a hotel and watching a recorded version of it tomorrow night. If I were to watch it when its happening, that would mean kickoff would be about 3 am, and for someone who’s been passed out at 9 pm every night, that’s a little past my bedtime. Therefore, I will not be in contact with anybody back home tomorrow until I actually watch the game. The funny part is that it’s really not that hard to disconnect from the world and not spoil it when you’re in a village in Africa. I can guarantee you that nobody in my village will come up to me at any point and say “can you believe he made that field goal?” It just won’t happen. So on that note, I am signing off until after I am back up to date with you all and we can chat about it. Go Patriots! ~E

In an effort to keep relatively up to date with my blog, here is the next entry in my somewhat weekly escapade to document my life. Granted, lots has been happening that may very well define my work for the next few months of my existence here. Recently, I was approached by Aissatu, one of the four leaders of the women’s group. (Ironically, 3 of the 4 women are named Aissatu. This was the one I am closest with, Aissatu Diop.) She requested that I help the group by finding financing and enclosing the garden with barbed wire. This is not the easiest of tasks, as the area to be fenced in is a 2-hectare plot of land (for those of us stuck in the western world, that’s about 5 acres, or 4.94 according to the handy-dandy converter on my phone. I guess little old-school Nokias are good for something. But I digress.) The project would require at least 100 thousand CFA of financing, which converts to roughly 200 dollars, not an easy sum to come by in the village. The project is very much possible, and similar projects are carried out all the time, but I had to air two main concerns, namely 1: they still need to come up with a 25% community contribution, which might be a challenge due to the fact that they can barely come up with their contributions towards seeds for this year and 2: I am sick of going out to work in the women’s garden and having most of these women peace out early to go cook lunch/lay down/take care of someone’s kid/whatever their excuse may be. Why should I work my butt off for a group of people who don’t quite seem to understand the importance of what they are doing? So despite all roadblocks, I started talking with my chief of village and my APCD in Dakar to see what we can do, and whether this will turn into a giant headache remains to be seen. Another grant-funded project seemed to just appear at roughly the same time, this time to do with douches, or compound latrines. These would be similar to mine, if you’ve seen pictures of it that are buried somewhere in those album off to your right on the screen, but the village would complete one for every compound. This is also a significantly costly project and we are still working out the logistics of it, but if my original plan to hit up a lovely little organization called appropriate projects (google it- www.appropriateprojects.org) falls through, I may be hitting you all up for money in the near future. Unlike my reservations about the women’s garden, I actually am pretty determined to see this through, because you have no idea what its like to walk out to the field every day and pass by a group of children out on a compost pile behind their compounds with their pants down and pooping their little hearts out in public. The kicker is when they get all excited to see me and try to scream and wave and greet me in the middle of this rather awkward occurrence. All while this is happening, I finally decided that I must paint a world map in my school before my close of service, and what better time to do it than when I am starting two other major projects? Makes perfect sense, right? After my exasperation with the school garden grant, the two new ones I plan to write and never wanting to write a project abstract again, I have decided to suck it up and just pay it. It’s not really all that expensive, and it’s a damn good way to get me out of my hut and away from screaming children for a few afternoons while I go grid out and outline a world map in pencil in my ecole primaire and listen to some good music. Sometime in the next month, I’ll invite a group of other volunteers over to my site, buy some paint and paintbrushes, cook up a good bowl of yassa ginard which for you non-wolof speakers is rice with chicken and onion sauce, and we’ll bring this thing to life. At least then finally most people in the village will be able to point to their own country on a map, especially after I reward them with candy for doing so. In the meanwhile I’m still working in my garden every morning, watering my beautiful little guava and orange saplings, and damnit if I don’t get some good looking carrots and tomatoes by the end of this gardening season. It’s also pretty good therapy sitting in a garden each morning and writing in your journal. I suggest you try it sometime. And on that note, I leave you until next Sunday. Inchallah. ~E

So it’s been a while, as you can see. I owe an apology to anyone who still reads this blog at all, but in my defense, I did go on vacation for a while. Since my last entry, I have come back to site, left site, gone to America over the holidays, come back to country, attended our all-volunteer conference in Thies, gone to the West African Invitational Softball Tournament in Dakar, and returned to site. So, it’s been a bit of a whirlwind, as you can imagine. I actually find myself enjoying the quiet downtime to get my life back in order that I have here at site. As it stands, I have 8 months or so left in my service, and I intend to make the best of it, whatever that may mean. But first, let’s back up a bit.

Back in December, I had a couple week period at site right before I went on vacation during which I was (I think understandably) rather annoyed and irritable at the world. I was, after all, about to return to my home, friends, family, boyfriend, etc. A couple of things occurred that are rather normal in Senegalese culture, but at the time irked me very much.

For instance, as I was working to get the school garden pepinieres in the ground before I left, I was struggling to get in touch with the teachers and outline the terms of the grant: I bought the tools, and they have to choose and buy the seeds. I like to be present when we actually seed the pepineres so I have an idea of what is going on, and for my school garden in Saloum Diane I set the date well ahead of time so that my counterparts would be ready. On the day we were supposed to seed, I got there and found that nobody really had any idea that the seedbeds were supposed to be made on that day and my main work partner had traveled to Sokone and was unreachable by cellphone. I was pretty flustered by the whole situation, not only because I just wanted to get it done and leave to go on vacation, but also because these sorts of things happen all the time in this culture.

A similar situation occurred right around that time in which a work partner of mine from Dakar showed up in the village to check out the project he has going on here. I can’t remember if I wrote about this a year ago, but there had been this big NGO collaboration that wanted to put in a massive tree nursery in my village, and it included partners in both Scotland and the US which I would liked very much to have talked to. After all, I will be back in that glorious country in less than a year, and it can’t hurt to have some high-up contacts there that have actually seen me at work in the village doing many of the same tasks and monitoring in the same way that they do. I called more than once to confirm the time and date that they were planning on coming, and my Senegalese work partner told me a certain day in the afternoon. That morning, I went to the garden to water my nurseries there, and just as I was returning to the village I saw the cars of all the American and Scottish partners driving away to another village. That was the only opportunity I had to meet with those people, and I got very upset with the Senegalese work partner who had told me the wrong information. I asked why he hadn’t called me to let me know he was coming earlier than expected, and he basically just told me that he forgot.

It’s really upsetting when you miss out on a such a large opportunity because of a small cultural flaw- timing in this country means nothing. Scheduling and appointments hold no real value whatsoever, and in both of these cases just a phone call to inform that a time or date had been changed would be sufficient. I left to go on vacation with a bad feeling about this culture- why should I bother to help them out and stress myself out over being on time for anything here if they never bother to show the same respect? It’s hard to get across the point that most developed country value schedules, but even if I do manage to explain that to a couple of people, a single American Peace Corps Volunteer really doesn’t have the power to invoke a major cultural behavioral change. Such is life, I guess.

Anyway, enough of that rant. AMERICA! Because that’s what you’re all wondering about, right? It’s a beautiful country, especially after having been in Senegal for 16 months. I went skiing and snowshoeing with the family, went on many walks and ate lots of delicious American cuisine, and apart from a few hiccups involving illness (I actually spent most of New Years in the ER) I’d say I had a very successful trip home. Being there was like walking through this weird dream-world where everything is like you remember it except the way you relate to almost every other person in your life. Also, everything looks amazingly clean, like someone just came down with a giant duster and made everything spic and span.

I spent the last week or so there buying supplies for the village and for myself; much of the weight I carried back to Senegal consisted of granola bars and dried fruit from Costco, which is a little like Peace Corps heaven in bulk. I also lugged about 80 dollars worth of cheap school supplies to be distributed between the 3 schools I work closely with, which was slightly ironic when I got back and found out that all the teachers in the country are on strike. It will all be used eventually though.

Immediately after touching down, my friend Clint and I had to find our way back to the training center in Thies and get our two very jet-lagged selves ready for the all-volunteer conference, and I immediately had to present to a group of Assistant Peace Corps Directors and the Country Director what is going on in my work zone, for which I am responsible. Somehow I made it through, and spent the next couple of days trying not to doze off in sessions and grabbing 10-minute naps on random benches wherever I could.

Finally, we all went to Dakar for WAIST, which I wrote about last year, and I don’t have much more to say other than it was a couple of days of reconnecting with friends, spending too much money on food, readjusting to this country and destroying my liver. But you know, that’s what growing up is for I guess.

At any rate, I’m back in village now, enjoying the cool breezes of January that you get for a couple of weeks before the hot season sets in. I’m actually pretty well bundled up at night because it gets colder than you’d expect for the desert. Pape keeps complaining about the cold and the wind, but I just respond how much I like it and making fun of him for complaining. At least let me have my fun for a few weeks, and the hot season will be here before we all know it.

I’ll do my best to update more regularly, because I know how fast these next 8 months will go by. It’s not exactly the light at the end of the tunnel yet, but the train is definitely on that track. Email me with any questions you’ve got, and I’ll respond as soon as I can.

Until next time

~E

Here I am, November 10th, sitting in the Kaolack house for installs. The new agriculture stage is finally here, and they are all living through that first terrifying day of newness and confusion. I don't envy that first day when you know nothing and nobody and are suddenly cut off from all your friends. But just as my stage made it through last year, they'll all make it through just fine this year.

It's nice to have all the sites full again, and my subregion is up to 15 people. 15! We started off with maybe 8, so it has almost doubled in the year I've been here. I'm pretty stoked for us too; we've got a really diverse and motivated group of people who I know will do great things. I'm proud I get the chance to help them as one of the coordinators of our work zone this year. And if nothing else, typing up meeting notes and visiting other people's sites gives me something to do in the non-agfo season.

In other news, it was Tabaski this past week, and I got to really celebrate with my family this year in a way that I was not quite able to do last year when my language skills and relationships were just starting to develop. I helped cook, watched the men kill and clean the sheep (a fascinating biology lesson) and went out dancing at night. I actually put a bunch of American dance songs on a flash drive and played them on a radio that one of my neighbors have and started teaching the girls what American dancing looks like. Felt a little silly showing little girls how to move their hips and get into it, but they loved the music and laughed a lot. Besides, Senegalese dancing is awkwardly sexual in its own way, and it's not uncommon to see women at baptisms jumping around and lifting their skirts up to show everyone what they've got under there (sometimes just underwear, but sometimes not) so I did not feel THAT bad teaching them how to move.

Tomorrow I'm on my way back to village to stick out the next couple of weeks until Thanksgiving, and I will hopefully be giving this health tourney I'm putting together a test run. See, my Poste de Sante doctor and I were putting together a mini health tourney for teaching first aid to villagers and how to take care of injuries until they can see a doctor. There was some miscommunication about funding and timing, which is essentially the downfall of every good Peace Corps project, and now I'm left with a bunch of visual aids that I paid for and drew myself and no real schedule or plan for how to use them. My next task is to convince the doctor that we can do this project informally and just do a test run to see how it works. I could also try to get my school gardens up and running, and forget the whole health tourney thing ever happened.

Basically, I just have to find ways to distract myself until mid-December, when I go on vacation to AMERICA. When you've been away for over 15 months, the last few weeks before you finally get to see your family is relatively unproductive. I have no high hopes for changing the world at the moment, only dreams of Dunkin Donuts and ski lodges. I'll update on how the whole village thing goes soon. Again, got to keep myself distracted, right?

~E

Yesterday, I used cashed in the grant money I got for two school gardens that I am in charge of, and put down about $300 dollars at a local hardware store on chicken wire, watering cans, rakes, shovels, and gardening picks that will be used by students to create their very own little vegetable plots. Well try to, anyway. The process involved biking over to another larger village about 40 minutes away, negotiating prices, waiting for the car to come that goes each day between Saloum Diane and Kaolack, and getting all the materials and me and my bike onto that car to take back to Saloum Diane and unload at my friend Mbaye’s house there. Considering the general lack of organization and quality transport in this country, I’d consider it a pretty successful day. It got me thinking how much harder that whole process would have been even a couple of months ago before I had the same relationships with everyone in the area that I did. Knowing the owner of the hardware store, the car driver, and the people over in Saloum Diane really expediated a process that could have been much harder had I not known all of these people. This, in turn, got me thinking about where I live now. I don’t think of myself as living in Africa so much as living in Keur Andallah and being a part of the Kaolack region in Senegal. I don’t spend every day now thinking “Wow, I’m in Africa” just as we don’t think every day in the states “Wow, I live in North America. Isn’t that special?” I guess this just happens naturally over time, and speaking of time, it has now been a year since swear-in, and a year ago tomorrow was the day that I first set foot in Keur Andallah. So congratulations to anyone in my stage reading this, and let this be my own personal “yay for me” moment. With a little bit of perspective, it’s been a really rewarding experience thus far, and it just made me realize how little time I have left here. If I’ve already been here half my total time, that means I have that same amount of time to accomplish everything I wanted to accomplish in Senegal before I’m out. I took a little while the other morning to write down a short list of goals that I’d like to at least attempt before I leave here so I can start planning now. Time, just as it does anywhere, slips by when you’re not looking, and before you know it your time’s up. I wrote down mostly projects I’d like to try: painting a mural, grafting some mango and ziziphus trees, establishing a couple more live fences, etc. Then I still have to consider the places I want to visit before I leave… Sort of a weird analogy I came up with while making my list is that your service in Peace Corps is like a whole human life cycle condensed into 2 years. You get here ,and you are an infant who does not know anything about anything- the language barrier is obvious, but how do you feel when you look at the hole in the floor where you’re expected to do your business and realize that your really are back at square one. Then a few months go by and you’re an infant- blabbing in baby language and learning how to eat or greet properly, and after that you are swearing in- more like your high school graduation- and off on your own learning how to be an independent human being. Over time you pick up the language, make friends, find a purpose (even if it is just to water a couple of seeds you planted). Then a year in, you have your mid-life crisis. Believe me, every volunteer I’ve talked to has had a mid-service crisis, which usually comes just before your actually halfway point. You struggle to find meaning in what you’ve done so far and how to make the best use of your remaining time here. Time goes on, and you start to realize that your time really is limited here, and you should see all those places that you never got to see and spend time with people you became friends with. By the time you leave, you have to accept what you’ve accomplished, knowing your time’s run out, and you’re going to say goodbye to all your friends and your host family knowing you probably won’t see any of them again. By Peace Corps life-cycle standards, that makes me about 50 years old right now. Got through my mid-life crisis, and now it’s time to buckle down and start seeing places, spending time with friends and getting projects done that I want to accomplish before I leave. Time to get to it. I’m starting with a new herb garden. Wish me luck. ~E

As I was walking out to the field this morning, I said good morning to one of my elderly male neighbors and greeted him as usual. He said that there was a lot of grass now and if you walk in it there’s laeye. I looked at him slightly confused since I had not heard that word before, and after he confirmed that I did not know what it meant, he went on to explain that it is water in the grass in the mornings. I exclaimed, “Oh, dew! Yeah I know what that is.” He replied that yes- it’s water, and it must come from up above in the trees at night or maybe it comes from the ground, but either way, it goes away each day when the sun comes out and gets hot, then comes back again at night. Helpless without the vocabulary to explain the concept of condensation and temperature difference in Wolof, I just smiled and agreed with him and went on my way. Sometimes Senegal amuses me. ~E

So I've been to Dakar a couple of times, but never for such a long time. I made the trip to participate in the Access English Camps sponsored by the US Embassy, and it was a really fun and rewarding experience. We worked with middle school-aged students and put together a typical American summer day camp for a week, conducting activities in English and teaching them about our culture. We had them sing camp songs, participate in field day activities like the 3-legged race and tug of war, played basketball and ultimate frisbee, taught them capture the flag, and let them organize little skits in English to perform to the group. We also had a few classroom based activities involving a geography game show ("who can point to New York on this map?") and American music history ("Anyone ever hear of B.B. King?") At least now they know that American music does not consist solely of Beyonce and Rhianna. Oh, and you can't forget Justin Beiber. When we had the kids translating lyrics to their favorite songs, a couple of them could recite all of Beiber's "Baby." Keep in mind, English is the 3rd or 4th language many of these kids are learning.

It was a bit difficult to put together a week's worth of educational and fun activities in the spur of the moment, but between six of us, I think we did a pretty good job. In fact, the local TV station came and interviewed us on the day the US Ambassador made an appearance. I was apparently on national TV speaking in Wolof for an interview, though I haven't had the opportunity to watch myself. It's probably better that way.

After the camp was over, I stuck around in Dakar for my mid-service medical exam and to say goodbye to one of my good friends who finished her service and left. Now I will go back to Kaolack tomorrow with a clean bill of health (woot woot!) and as an official second-year volunteer to welcome the new trainees of the agriculture stage that is scheduled to swear in a the beginning of November. Then it's back to the usual grind, but this time with schools! Finally, school will be starting sessions again, which means that I get to return to my favorite project of school gardens and my Senegalese friends will all return to the villages. Time is really flying now. I'll be home on vacation for the holidays before I know it!

~E

Sometimes I find that I’m so busy it’s hard to stay on top of everything going on here, and some days it just stops and I’m back to being bored again. You can never really fall into a routine. The past week I was up in Thies teaching the new stage for a day, then traveled through Kaolack and onto Toubacouta for a mangrove reforestation, and now I’m back to site for a week before continuing onto Dakar for an English camp and my midservice exam. These days, I live in this perpetual state of disbelief; it’s been over a year already in country, I still have a year left to go, I get to go home for vacation in a few months, I’m teaching the new stage and becoming a second-year volunteer, running meetings and actively planning projects and trainings. You never quite get over these things. Peace Corps has made me, however, one of the world’s greatest travelers, because I can be stuck in a car for long periods of time and not notice it, even when squished in the back of a sept-place with large Senegalese woman on either side of me and breathing in fumes. Podcasts of “This American Life” and “Radiolab” do help matters, but when it’s over and I still have to bike 30 km over a dirt road back to site, I don’t blink an eye. Traveling in America will be heaven for me when this is all over. At any rate, training was enjoyable, and I got to try my hand at teaching an hour-long session and using my experiences as teaching tools. I probably was a bit nervous at first, because at one point a trainee raised his hand and jokingly asked “Do you always talk this fast? You’re not from California, I assume.” I slowed down after that. Overall, it went well, and I then got to take advantage of a free afternoon in Thies to go buy stuff at the toubab stores downtown. The mangrove reforestation went swimmingly as well. To save money in my travels, I camped out at one of the campemonts where the Tobuacouta volunteer lives. Some other volunteers were staying in a campemont with a pool, and the people working there let us all come over and use it, so everyone hung out in the pool at night and caught up. The reforestation itself involved a trip to the delta, an hour long boat-ride out to the reforestation area and a couple of hours of sticking mangrove seeds in the mud out in the sun. It’s more fun that it sounds, but also very sunscreen-intensive. There were large groups of kids that were enthusiastically running around and sticking the seeds in the ground as fast as they could, which limited the work that we had to do, and the whole event culminated in a water fight and some sharing of some boisson. It was a pretty successful day. Now I’m just in transition. Outplanting is done, the rainy season is starting to wind down, I’m waiting for the teachers to get back to start the school gardens up again, and I’m planning some other tourney-type of projects with the doctor and some other volunteers that I’ll write about in the coming months. For the time being, my days consist of reading, playing guitar, blogging, and getting caught in the rain in Pape’s field. Fun times. ~E

Wow busy week. Tuesday I conducted a training for the women’s group to get them to outplant their pepiniere that they made a while back and promptly forgot about, Wednesday I outplanted all morning with one of my farmers, yesterday we did the moringa tourney part 2 teaching about nutrition and how to use moringa powder, and today Garrison and I finally got the pump in my village up and running, once and for all (inchallah.) All of a sudden it’s Friday. Funny how you forget how time goes by fast when you’re busy. The women’s group day went smoothly- it’s a weight off my shoulders knowing that several hundred trees will actually make it into the ground this year and all that work will not have gone to waste. Now I’m hoping that they all see the value of the work they were doing once the trees finally start to take, and we’ll be able to get everything done sooner next year and not put it off until after Ramadan is over. Working together with some of the kids from the student association in Saloum Diane was really helpful. They got here much later than expected so we didn’t get the training started until around 10:30 or so, but this is Senegal, and therefore the only thing you can be certain of is that nothing will ever start on time. The exact same problem occurred yesterday in Saloum Diane. People are not used to being told to get their act together, so the whole idea of rushing is a foreign concept. You can even see it in the way they walk- they sort of just saunter along not really caring about where they are going. Granted, I know plenty of Senegalese people who understand the concept of timeliness, but they are all generally the educated ones who have gone to school and been in trouble at some point in their lives for being late. Therefore, my perspective on this country is a tad bit skewed by the isolation of the village life. But I digress… Once the moringa training got underway, it was actually quite successful. The doctor from our Poste de Sante (health post) came to the event and helped to translate our sketchy wolof into understandable wolof and was able to take into account cultural knowledge and get the point across better than we would be able to. The training was just a talk in a classroom about what vitamins are, what each one does, and how to incorporate them into your diet using moringa powder. We demonstrated how to make the powder with some dried leaves and pestle and mortar, and then we asked some women to participate and help us cook a standard Senegalese porridge called Rui. We then put the powder they made into the porridge to show that it doesn’t change the taste at all but it is much more nutritious. Overall, I think we got the point across pretty well, but I still wonder how many people are actually consistently going to put in the effort to change their diet and add moringa powder. The general culture in Senegal is that you don’t do a lot more work than you have to, and this represents another task that the toubabs are asking them to do. Garrison and I were chatting yesterday and we realized that even if every single person in that training taught every other person in the village about moringa powder and they all made an effort to use it, how much would that change the quality of their life? It’s basically the same thing as taking vitamins, and I know people in the states who take vitamins and people who don’t care, and I wouldn’t necessarily say that one group is happier than the other. Still, we do the best we can, and for what its worth, the doctor told me he thought the women would actually try what they learned in their own homes. And besides, I get the satisfaction of knowing that we’re still doing the best we can, so I’ll take it for what it’s worth. ~E

Highs and Lows Anybody reading that from RWU, remember that game? Granted, probably anybody who has gone to college recently or been in any sort of club knows highs and lows- you say the high point of your day and the low point. Today: I went to Saloum Diane to meet up with my counterparts there and prepare for moringa tourney and our women’s outplanting formation. Went to the school to check up on the intensive beds. My low for the day: Some kid actually broke open the side door of the schoolyard to let their livestock in so that it could eat the grass and destroy the intensive beds, which are all now pretty much grazed to the ground. We (and by we I mean the school director) yelled at some kid walking by with his donkey, who the school director had seen grazing yesterday, and the kid just mumbled some stuff, looked away and continued walking. Real respectful. If it was me, then much as it would anger me I would understand more than the school director himself. Anyway, we met up with the chief of village and some other people, and explained the project and the upcoming follow-up nutritional tourney that we are planning, and they are all on board with it, so that redeemed it little. The high of my day, though, was when we went back to Mbaye’s house so I could go through all the parts of the project so that he could present it better in native Wolof, and during the conversation he said how he liked the project and actually started a moringa bed himself. We walked behind the house to the garden and voila! A tiny little rudimentary moringa intensive bed was germinating away, complete with trees off to the side to provide seeds for replacement in the future. That was one of those very rare times that I actually get to see our skills applied and carried on. And on a more personal note- one more high and low. High: I started jumproping in my hut since it is hard to get out and run when it is raining all the time, and I needed exercise. Discovered that it is really effective way of avoiding gawking Senegalese while the Toubab girl runs around in shorts first thing in the morning. Low: I don’t remember the time my calves hurt this badly. ~E

A couple of days ago, we welcomed a new group of Small Enterprise Development volunteers to Kaolack, and seeing as everyone was on vacation, COSed or not wanting to deal with it, I ended up in charge of coordinating their installation. Luckily it was a small group, and only 9 new volunteers were here, but this continued the bizarre year-in-country experience. I found myself standing in front of them all with my notes going over rules of the house, places to eat and shop in Kaolack, and apologizing in advance for our slow annoying internet.

Our subregion is welcoming 3 new volunteers to replace my friends Byron, Cassie and Cail. This is probably the weirdest experience of all, since those people really helped me get through my first year in country and were my go-to people when I had a question about anything, and now I'm supposed to be the one responsible for having all the answers. I really do remember thinking the year-in volunteers knew everything and were totally comfortable in this country, and now I realize that nobody ever has all the answers to anything. Yes, I've adapted and I can more comfortably navigate this developing country in a language I previously did not understand a word of, but by no stretch of the imagination do I have all the answers. We'll see if it's any different a year from now.

Well I'm out.~E

Last week, I passed my first year in this country, which I aptly managed to forget to blog about and thus am now getting around to my public reflections on life. Rather than reflecting on how far I've come, etc, I'll share a quick little anecdote. Most days at site, I go out of the field in the morning with a bag containing my water bottle, planner (because I'm a geek) and my journal, so I can sit in peace and write about life without being bothered by people in the compound. The other day I was reading back in the journal to earlier in my service, sometime right after install, and got to a line that read almost like "man, I can't imagine how much I will have adjusted to all of this after a year has gone by." Ironically, this was almost exactly my year mark in country when I read this, and I could very clearly remember writing that statement in the first place. It was sort of a surreal talking-to-myself-from-a-year-ago experience. I guess you could also call it a time capsule.

Then, talking to my dad on skype yesterday, he commented about how weird it will be to read back on the journal after I've been back in the states for a while and whenever I'm having a hard time there, I can remember "at least I'm not in Senegal anymore." That's still seems like forever into the future, but I'm sure when it does happen, reading back on it will seem quite recent. Funny how time works.

The point of this whole thing is that despite the fact that I feel like I've been in this country for eternity sometimes and am bound to while away the rest of my life here, I'm really almost halfway done. And that's sort of a scary thought. I've been thinking "Ok, what have I accomplished so far? Now I've got about that amount of time to accomplish everything else I'll do in this country." And yes, I realize that I haven't quite yet reached a year at site, but as we speak the stage a year ahead of me is in the process of ending their service and going home. I'm starting to get that same feeling that I had in college of "what next?," you know, the feeling you get when you don't know where you'll be or what you'll be doing in a year or so. But I guess that's part of the excitement of it all.

Ok enough sentimental ramblings on time. Back in the here and now, I currently find myself piled high in planning programs and installs. The new SED volunteers are due to arrive in Kaolack for their installation on Sunday morning, and being the overachiever that I am, I had to volunteer to coordinate the process. This means that I will go back to site today, only to return again 3 days later to continue my online ramblings to you all.

In addition, we had a training for our upcoming moringa health tourney yesterday. If you remember correctly, we did a region-wide tourney training how to plant moringa intensive beds a month ago, and I installed one in the primary school in Saloum Diane with the help of some other volunteers and some very motivated Senegalese counterparts. Now, we are returning to all of those sites armed with dried moringa leaves to make moringa powder, ingredients for making a nutritional porridge, and visual aids to help us explain the benefits of vitamins and importance of eating healthy foods to combat illness and malnutrition. I am lucky enough to have some friends in Saloum Diane that are extremely motivated to make this program work- the primary school director and one of the high school students that is home for the summer have both proved to be indispensable counterparts who want to educate the community. The high school student, Mbaye, has also expressed interest in coordinating an outplanting day to help with the women's garden pepiniere in Keur Andallah, so we will hold a training in my village in few weeks to help the women understand the importance to live fencing to protect their field and the trees to improve the soil. Hopefully, we will manage to outplant a few hundred trees in one day with the help of the communitarial student association, the women's group, and a few key Senegalese counterparts that are willing to get the message across.

Hopefully, when everyone is done starving themselves for Ramadan and people are once again willing to work, September will be a very productive month. Sometimes you really just have to set small goals for yourself, like making it through the next two weeks. I'm ready for this boring lull in my service to be over.

~E

I’m currently sitting here in my hut on a rainy Tuesday, which also happens to be the first day of Ramadan, cooking myself a lovely little lunch of mashed potatoes and hiding from the world. For those of you who are unaware of the outside world and don’t know what Ramadan is, it is the Muslim month of fasting to teach humility, patience and submissiveness to God (thank you wikipedia). They are permitted to break fast every evening, and in Senegal we do so with coffee dates and bread. I was in homestay last year during Ramadan already, so it is not a foreign holiday to me now. However in training, the family was briefed on the fact that we had just gotten to country, had no resources and didn’t understand the culture or language, and they were expected to cook us lunch. Here in the village, no such briefing or expectation occurs, and as a full-fledged volunteer, you’re on your own. Many volunteers choose to fast along with their families, and people in the village often expect that you do fast with the rest of the community. However, many of us also resort to hiding in our huts and treating ourselves to all the foods we generally don’t cook for ourselves on a regular basis in village. I talked to a couple of Senegalese friends and family members about this, and the understand. Yes, the villagers will joke about me having to fast with everyone, and yes, I have to be very discreet, but according to my Senegalese uncle Babacar, they understand that I’m not Muslim and there’s no real spiritual gratification in it for me. I can try to be integrated to a point, but in the end I’m still me, and when all my friends are getting out of village to go on vacation or COS, I really feel no remorse if I’m still here in village and I don’t want to starve myself. So that will be my August. Hiding to cook myself lunch, breaking fast with the family each day, and being jealous of everyone going on vacation. However, the AC converter was fixed a little while back, giving me the ability to charge my computer once again, so maybe I can pass the time by blogging more often. ~E

It's not as strange as the title sounds, I swear. I am working on both, and it's been keeping me very busy indeed. Outplanting season has been in full swing while I've been complaining to you all about this country. That means that all the while I've been moaning about how annoying Senegalese people can be, I've also been out in the field every day with a shovel and a knife, cutting off all those bags I so lovingly filled and planting the little buggers in the ground. Mind you, these are mostly thorny species we're talking about, so this is a task that must be done with care.

In the meanwhile, my friend Garrison has shipped himself out to my site on a couple of occasions to install our village rope pump! After collecting a community contribution of 20 thousand CFA (about 40 dollars), Garrison's partner Water Charity has helped us fund a pump that will benefit a major portion of my village by increasing the ease and speed at which people can pull water for themselves and their animals. Here's the link that explains his overall project, 52 pumps in 52 weeks if you're curious about the details about how the pump is made, and I posted a few pictures of my village's project in the albums. Check it out.

At the moment, I'm in Kaolack, baking chocolate cake with Cassie and trying to get out a grant proposal for the upcoming school year's gardens in Babou Njittiy and Saloum Diane. I'll update more on the actual projects in the future. If I'm not mistaken, it is still July. According to Peace Corps, that's about when I need to be applying for money to get these gardens off the ground for a school year that starts in October. The take-home point from this: Peace Corps, despite it's reputation for trying to save the world, is still a government organization, complete with piles of paperwork and red tape. Remind me never to go into politics.

I'm pretty sure the chocolate cake takes priority right now.

~E.

I should start by apologizing for the dismal tone of my last blog entry. But that’s life in Senegal for you- first you are at the top of the world, wondering at how you managed to come to a new culture, integrate yourself into a third-world village and learn a new language, and the next moment you turn around a realize that you did in fact just leave everything you ever knew behind and it will be a long time until you can come back. That is what is known by PCVs, lovingly, as a mid-service crisis. But it’s not one major event that happens and passes, as I originally thought. I’m coming to realize that it comes and goes, just as everything in life. Even if I was in the States right now, I’m sure I would have bad times as well as good. The difference is that in the States, you usually have more of an open line of communication to vent and an ability to walk around the corner at all times, buy yourself some ice cream and move on with your life. Here, that angst manifests itself as angry blog entries. In reality, I’m doing alright overall. I’ve been back in village for about a week, getting over a cold that I had, and getting my hands dirty outplanting all of those pepinieres I wrote about a while back. It’s a lot of work, but it is somewhat calming to work quietly in a field outside for a couple of hours and just let your mind wander. I’ve also taken the time to write in my personal journal every day, a practice I started years ago as a little kid, and I have taken up again while here as a way to process, record, and vent about my experiences. At some point I’ll be able to go home, re-read about all of these difficult times that I’ve made it through, and write new blog entries about how much I’ve learned. In the meantime, I’ll continue to rant about my life and try to document all my experiences here to my loving readers. May you all keep enjoying TV, ice cream and internet every day. And may you all send me care packages on a regular basis. Much love, ~E

In Kaolack today, but going back to site in a little bit. It always is difficult mobilizing enough energy and effort to actually make the trip back down there- have to get a taxi to the market, walk to the garage while ignoring all the obnoxious moto drivers hissing at me to get my attention, find the car, wait forever for the thing to leave, endure the bumpy, 4-5 hour ride back and end up in my village where work and Wolof people await me. As you can imagine, it's always tempting to spend an extra day here, drinking cold water, eating real food, watching movies on my computer when I don't have to worry about the battery dying, speaking in English. Sigh. But that's what America is for, right?

Disclaimer: I'm going to complain a little. There's no reason one can't vent in public on their blog to the world, right?Senegal gets really tiring sometimes. You're exhausted by the heat, the culture, the lack of communication because of language barriers and cultural misunderstandings, the work, the food... the list goes on. Not that I don't think this is a rewarding experience and I'm going to toughen up and push through, but sometimes you've just got to give up for a day or two and stop trying to be the perfect volunteer. Even if you are the perfect volunteer, you will probably leave this country having made an impact on a few people's lives, maybe taught some new skills or started some good projects, but that doesn't mean that what you do will be continued or remembered forever. Volunteers are not gods to Senegalese people, they are foreigners with money that occasionally you can interact with. Ok that's a mild generalization, but it's hard to really have a full life conversation about what my job is as a volunteer and the purpose of Peace Corps with every single person I meet on the street. Sometimes you have to just look down at the ground and keep on walking.

I do have good days here. I have a fantastic relationship with my family, great work partners, a beautiful site, and some very good friends (though most of them are currently home on vacation). There are times though when that's not enough- being here is a constant reminder of who you are because you are very aware that you don't fit in. It's a study in human psychology- group mentality always singles out the person with different color skin, who doesn't speak the language or do things the same way as everyone else. I don't always want to drink attaya, I don't want to wear a complet everyday and yes, I do like to read for fun. What gives. My host uncle, who is home in Keur Andallah for school vacation but normally teaches in Sokone, had a conversation with me the other day. He asked why I always just like to sit and read in the evening. What is my job here in Senegal? He is a teacher after all, and he knows that it is difficult to always have conversations about things like early marriage and having many children without the ability to support them, but he still said I could try using my time by having conversations with villagers about problems in Senegal and how they can take small steps to fix them. I do that, I really do. I've sat in the field and talked about culture and families and environmental issues and education.

But I'm only human. Humans have limits. We need friends, a sense of belonging, a sense of comfort. That's hard to come by in this country for a volunteer. We do our best, but we get sick and tired just like everyone else. Sometimes you just have to face that and make it through another day. So I'm still going back to site today. I'll continue to deal with the frustrations of being a volunteers and handle them in whatever way I can. I'm blessed to have this opportunity, but I've gotta say- sometimes it's just easier pretending I'm not here for a little while.

First of all, I apologize for that very rushed and very nonsensical previous entry about the rain. That is apparently what happens when you see a weather event that you have not experienced in the last 9 months of your life and decide to blog about it on limited battery life. The AC converter is currently not functioning in Ousman's house because they are too lazy to maintain the batteries that the solar panels charge, so I am currently without an ability to charge at site. Kaolack house it is.

Happy belated 4th of July everyone! If you are a facebook stalker of mine, you already know that we ate BBQ chicken, a lovely menu of various side dishes and desserts, chocolate rice-crispy treats notwithstanding. So now you understand what makes a PCV happy. I have to admit though, after eating small amounts of rice and millet and secretly snacking on a granola bar occasionally in my room for the last 2 weeks, it's a bit difficult to stomach an entire Thanksgiving-style feast, and needless to say it was an early night for me.

In other news, the rainy season has really commenced, emphasized now by the return of the giant lake in the middle of Pape's field and the muddy disgusting streets that Kaolack is famous for. Gratefully, they are paving the road in front of the regional house which will help prevent the giant puddle that prevents all ease of movement to or from the house we lovingly dubbed "Lake Kaolack."

The arrival of the rains signals a change in my general schedule, since now my goal for the next couple of months focuses almost entirely around outplanting all those pepinieres I so lovingly nurtured since April. This is the part of my job that feels like you are actually helping the earth, since now I am actually taking baby trees and putting them into the ground. It was especially rewarding the other day planting a grafted ziziphus tree that I bought up in Thies a few weeks ago during the agfo summit. Assuming this tree takes off well, it will provide me with copious amounts of scions to graft onto other baby ziziphus trees and ultimately allow the village to make a profit off of selling little jujubee fruits. Now if I can just figure out how to go about actually grafting them successfully, that would be useful.

The other piece of exciting news is that Garrison will be helping to install a rope pump onto one of our village wells within the next couple of weeks, and it will likely improve the quality of life of many women in the village by speeding up the time it takes to pull water. It's not exactly the same as having running water in your compound, but it's a change nonetheless, and it's something that the village can get excited about. Stay tuned for updates on that!

One other quick thing- if people have questions about any aspect of my life that you think I should post about, feel free to shoot me a note or a comment. I realize my blogs are getting less frequent since nothing seems quite as new and amazing to me anymore, but my life is probably still pretty foreign to many of you states-bound readers, so ask away. It's good to hear feedback.

Until next time,~E

tiIt rained today, in case you haven't figured that out from the title. The first significant rain of the year today, June 25, 2011. Last night it was extremely hot and humid, which during this part of the year means that rain is coming, but also means you cannot sleep well. This morning, I woke up and went to the field to make a small pepiniere, and it started thundering in the distance and sprinkling a bit. I finished up what I was working on and got back to the village as the mist was winding down, then as I was discussing issues with my roof with a neighbor, the wind picked up and the temperature dropped and I found myself huddling in my room while the rain started pouring down all around. I've got a video but since my internet is slow and my battery is dying I'm going to cut this entry short. I just wanted to share the wonderful phenomenon of water falling out of the sky with you all. You should appreciate it more when it occurs.

~E

Well it's been quite a whirlwind these past few weeks. I'm like the oracle volunteer of Senegal- never in the same place twice. First in Saloum Diane for mosquito net distributions, then to Toubacouta for a French language seminar, and finally off to Thies for our Agroforestry Summit, and here I am currently sitting in Kaolack.

I've noticed that your service gets much busier as it goes on for the obvious reasons that your language gets better, you gain confidence and feel more integrated. And as all overachievers know, that also makes time go by faster. Here I find myself looking at the new SED stage getting to country, and suddenly I am the old, experienced volunteer blabbing away in Wolof and bargaining for taxis like a pro. I'm not quite halfway through my service, but the stage a year ahead of us just attended COS conference and will begin to trickle out of the country next month, and I will be faced with the prospect of saying goodbye to many people I have formed good relationships with over the past 10 months or so.

But that's life, right? Before I know it I'll be the one leaving people behind and blah blah blah life goes on.

On a less depressing note, I actually am really anxious to get back to village all of a sudden. Despite the fact that many of my Senegalese friends left for a few months for school vacation (they are ironically all teachers) I am excited to bareroot bed a couple of citrus seeds I managed to obtain in Thies, meaning that I will put them in a shallow pepiniere and transfer them to tree sacs once they germinate. I also have the next few months to spend writing a grant for school gardens for this coming year. The Peace Corps decided that it had to conform with the rest of the American government by making grant applications 1300 pages long and involve questions involving everything from why your proposed project will be sustainable to your mother's shoe size.

Meanwhile, I have to give a quick an unrelated shout-out to something that has improved my quality of life over the past month or two: podcasts. It's amazing what a good episode of NPR's Fresh Air or This American Life can do for one's general sense of well-being and morale sometimes. At least my sept-place rides are much faster these days.So that concludes my rambling for today. Give America a hearty Asalamalekum for me.

~E

I am aware that it has been far too long since I have last written a blog entry- in fact I managed to skip the month of May altogether and pretty much get caught up in stuff so that the more I didn’t write the more it seemed impractical to do so and really give a good sense of everything that has been going on.

Don’t be mad at me, I haven’t forgotten you, my dear admirers. The opposite in fact, I still miss you all more than you know and have simply been trying to make time go by faster.

And indeed, faster it has started to go by. All of a sudden, I find myself waist-deep in several region wide projects, faced with the prospect of spending the rainy season trying my hand at grant-writing, and invading people’s personal space by counting their mosquito nets. Allow me to explain.

Now that the pepiniering season is essentially over, our job as good African Agroforesters is to make sure that those pepinieres get watered and are weeded. That leaves is all this free time to think of new and unique ways to keep cool as the humidity rolls in, or finding other projects to distract ourselves from the sorry state our lives have become. As a region, we are planning a Moringa tourney at local primary schools teaching kids how to dig beds, amend soil, and seed moringa beds. Later, a follow-up tourney will occur teaching kids about nutrition, the vitamins that moringa provides, and how they can be incorporated into your diet.

Another upcoming project is known as the “Louma circus,” aptly named because we will be a bunch of white kids invading African open markets with sound systems and mosquito net demonstrations and giving away little sachets of Neem lotion. For the sake of not making this entry 50 pages long, I will refrain from details until the event actually occurs. However, I did participate in the associated project that was taken over by the NGO USAID, in which mosquito nets are distributed to the entire region of Kaolack. Originally, some volunteers down in the Keidegou region (a long, long way from here) decided that it would be fun to provide “universal coverage” of beds in the region with mosquito nets in an effort to slow the transmission of malaria. If you do your share of blog-stalking, you will find out that their version of the program involved biking tons of mosquito nets over long distances in an effort to effectively give away the nets without allowing the recipients to sell the nets for profit or use them on their gardens. In the end, the government decided it liked the project but could do it more effectively than us ill-equipped volunteers, and took the program over in conjunction with an army of NGO partners who provide funding. Since it was originally a Peace Corps project, volunteers are still encouraged to help out in conjunction with their local health posts. As such, I found myself in Saloum Diane the other day walking around with another Senegalese volunteer for the project and writing down the number of people in each household, beds and mosquito nets available, then checking to see if those nets didn’t all have holes in them. It’s a long, hot day of invading people’s privacy, but on the bright side, it gave me and opportunity to hang out with the teacher contingent of Saloum.

So that brings me to projects I am excited about- school projects! I met the English and Spanish teachers of the village college, which means middle school in America-speak. Despite being the English teacher, his English wasn’t exactly flawless. If I were to have a conversation at normal speed, I doubt he would understand the majority. But I digress- I was invited to help teach a class this morning, and ended up standing in front of a class of confused middle school students trying to slowly express my dislike of the word “toubab” in English and listening to the teachers explanation of his love for Obama and hope that he will help to unite the African people. Well, an education will get you so far anyway.

So that’s a brief overview of my life at the moment. Most of June I am out of site traveling to a French seminar, Agroforestry summit in Thies, and the occasional volunteer visit or meeting. I’m getting to the point where I really need to start reviewing my French; all these doctors, teachers and educated community members insist that I speak with them in French and I’m beginning to look like an idiot for forgetting it. Wolof will only get you so far in the world. On the other hand, I am not exactly a fluent Wolof speaker either, and probably sound like an idiot anyway, so it might be a lost cause.

Life in Senegal is starting to seem less bizarre in a way; I mean, why not get woken up by hawing donkeys at 6 in the morning every day then listen to the call to prayer, that’s normal, right? It helps to be busy, but I’ve given up all hope of every feeling entirely at home here. Things become normal and routine, you can get used to almost anything, but I still miss being able to have educated conversations on a regular basis with people who actually want to listen. Oh well. I’ve made it this far, so moving right along…

~E

One of my favorite conversations to have with Senegalese people is about my life in America; what my English name is, what the climate and food is like, what our favorite sports are, etc. It gives me a chance to reminisce while holding a captive audience, and every Senegalese person I've ever met wants to go to America. I always end the conversation with something along the lines of "but if you went there, you'd hate it. There's no attaya (Senegalese tea they drink out of shot glasses with tons of sugar), it's really cold, and you wouldn't get to eat rice out of a single bowl with your hand ever single day. Also, Americans are addicted to work, much as we don't think we are. Most of us can't sit still for long periods of time without any real goal. Instead, we're always working at some sort of chore or following some sort of plan, even if that plan involves things like going to the gym or going out to meet someone for coffee- there's still a plan. Many people I talk to agree with me; they think they're better off here and might as well stay. Many people don't care and decide that all American have tons of money and live happy careless lives. Some really just want to go to see it for themselves as a vacation then come back to tell about it, which is okay with me.

Lately, though, I've really started wondering what Senegalese who do make it to America actually think of it once they see it for what it is rather than just through a TV screen translated into French. I've now been here long enough to have made enough contacts that I've gathered various opinions on the matter. Surprisingly, these opinions really run the gamut from hating it to illegally staying there because they can't stand to come back to their own country. For instance, the other day I was visiting my host dad Ousman in Saloum Diane for a meeting, and met one of his collegues who had gone to America and lived in New York for a couple of years a while back. I asked him if he hated it because of the cold, and he said no, that wasn't really an issue. The problem is that there's no real rest. If you're accustomed to spending every afternoon resting and drinking attaya, then you go drive a taxi through Manhattan for two years where you don't quite speak the language, I can understand that. When I was talking to my host mother Arame last week, I wondered out loud what Seneglase think of America, and she said that whenever she's had friends that went there they always return saying "Senegal am na jamm. Men nga toog fi." (Senegal is in peace, you can stay here.) Another person I met yesterday who I am collaborating with had a younger sister who managed to go through an exchange program for the better part of a year, and she came back to Senegal saying "Amerik nexul," or rather, America isn't very nice. Her experience there was focused more around the American education system, which varies drastically to the Senegalized-version of the French system here. I'm guessing it was more rigorous and she was held to higher expectations than she was used to, but I can't say for sure.

Some people think that they will love America and are not disappointed when they get there. Pape told me the other day that he knew a man when he was a kid in our neighboring village of Keur Theirno, and he left two wives and all of his kids to go to America and work at a hotel there. He's been there now for 30 years and as far as anyone knows, he has no plans to ever come back. One of the boutique owners in Kaolack across the street from a restaurant we like used to work in a boutique in New York for a few years also, and he enjoyed his time there greatly. He makes a special effort to import some of the same boutique-type products we value there such as orbitz gum and other brand names I can't quite remember.

I spent a lot of time thinking about what I wanted to write in this blog entry as a conclusion, until I realized that just as people from America differ drastically, so do Seneglaese. Every experience is an individual one. Some PCVs come to Senegal and fall in love with the culture here, and others simply can never get the taste for it, and it is really no different the other way around. Another way of explaining my point: when I was talking to my work partner yesterday about his little sister, I later thought to ask what state she had lived in. He responded that she had lived in Kansas. Being my loyal Bostonian self, I joked, "Well that's why she didn't like it." If I went to Kansas, the culture there alone differs so drastically from my own American experience that I probably would have been saying the same thing. (Sorry to anyone from Kansas reading this, I promise it's not personal.)

All in all, this just motivates me to find a bunch of Wolof-speaking Senegalese whenever I go back to America and throw out a couple of "Asalam alekum"s. Could make for an interesting international social study.

~E

Ok, so it’s not as bad as the title of this post might insinuate, but it’s about as hot as hell here, and for a couple of weeks, I am out in the field pretty relentlessly filling tree sacs, scarifying seeds, and trying to organize farmers and the women’s group to get their work done so the seedlings will have enough time to root and grow before they get outplanted over the rainy season. The majority of the tree nurseries will be devoted to local thorny species that will be used in live fencing. Now is the season when the need for decent fencing is best demonstrated, since the rains have been gone long enough that there is really no natural grass that goats, sheep and cows can graze on, so they are highly motivated to try to break through any man-made barriers that are placed between them and the yummy dry-season gardens that are lovingly watered and taken care of on a daily basis. Monday morning, for instance, while watering my garden out in Pape’s field and waiting for the rest of the women to get there and begin their pepiniere, a small heard of cows broke through the tree-branch fence they had constructed to begin feasting on the okra, onion, and tomato planted there. Diego, being a curious puppy, and I ran over there yelling (or barking) to get them to leave. The damage was noticeable though, and hopefully now the women will have learned that it is important to begin seeding live fencing and inspecting their dead fence regularly for gaps or weak areas. While I spend my mornings filling plastic bags with dirt and manure, I am trying to figure out the best way to keep cool in the scorching afternoons. Oumi finds it highly amusing that I have taken to soaking a bandana and wrapping it around my head, or even just soaking my entire tshirt and fanning myself to take advantage of evaporative cooling (I’m such a geek.) My canary, the French word for the large clay pot used for storing water that I purchased in a louma a couple of months back, has been put to good use in its original intended purpose: storing and cooling water. Granted the water is not ice cold, but it is significantly cooler than if I drank it directly from a plastic filter or a Nalgene bottle. Sleeping, however, is a different matter altogether. While I have not yet been forced to set up my cot under a mosquito net outside, I generally adapt the wet-bandana concept to put over my to help me keep cool trying to sleep, or even a larger piece of wax fabric to put over my whole body. By the time May rolls around, I will attempt to not fill up the majority of my blog entries complaining about the horrors of the hot season. The beginning of June is equally painful, but the first rain is generally due in mid-June, so I eagerly await that watery reprieve. Also, in case anybody in the land of online-ordered pizza deliveries has been keeping track, I have no been in this country over eight months. Can you believe it? Looking ahead, I still have a long way to go, but going from the comfortable life of living in a university with close access to all of your friends, good food and regular wing nights at your local pub to pulling your water from a well and eating millet porridge for dinner ever night, it’s easy to see that I’ve come a rather long way. Not to get too sentimental, but it is amazing what a couple months working and living in a third world country will do for your general perspective. It no longer weirds me out if I find myself stuck on a rickety old bus with a bunch of people who have a different skin color than yours and are yelling at each other in various languages in the middle of the desert with a screaming baby next to you, while it very well may have thrown me off a little bit before I arrived in this country. It’s a lot easier to just anticipate that everything will go wrong here and be extra happy when something goes right than if you take things like bus schedules for granted and get overly upset when you find yourself waiting at 4 am for two hours to get on that aforementioned adventure. In the meanwhile, it is time for me to go pull water so I can go seed some Acacia mellifera and reward myself with a cool bucket bath. You should try one sometime, it can be rather refreshing. Come help me fill some tree sacs while you’re at it. ~E

Hi Everyone!

Sorry it's been a while since my last blog post. Here is a short recap of my life since the last one:

I sat at site for 2 weeks or so preparing seeds, working in the garden, and getting the school windbreak off the ground. Check out my pepiniering season photos if you're curious.Then, I traveled to Foundiougne to visit Oumy, my teacher/sister. It was bizarre seeing a more developed Senegalese town where the majority of the population is educated and relatively middle-class. She took me to the beach where we went swimming in clothing that I would never consider wearing in the more conservative village, and even wearing a one-piece bathing suit I was still more covered than some of the Senegalese women wearing bikinis on the side of the water. Her house also has something your don't expect to find in the majority of Senegalese households- indoor plumbing! Not to the degree a standard American household does; there is no kitchen indoors and you still do your laundry by hand, but I was pretty floored to see a real shower and flushing toilet inside a house.

Alas, after my short beach vacation with my Senegalese friends, I had to return to site for a little while longer before returning to the regional house to work on my volunteer report form and pick up tree sacs. Over the next couple of weeks, all of my time will be occupied by sticking dirt and manure mixtures into small plastic bags, putting some seeds in them and praying to Allah that they will grow before the rains come. Wish me luck.In the mean time, enjoy this video that I have been trying to upload for the last couple of weeks and finally managed to work. It's a tour of Pape's garden where I spend most of my working hours, and I am sick of typing to you all, so this is my alternative:

Welcome to Pape's Field

Also, as the title of this post would lead you to believe, I got a new mailing address!! When I first installed, I did not realize just how far Sokone was from my site, and even though it is closer to my site than Kaolack, it is simply not convenient for me to get there either as a day trip or while I am in transit. Therefore, this should both speed up the arrival time of the package and the ease of checking my mailbox and pick-up for me. From now on, please send packages to the new address:

Emily TranB.P. 299Kaolack, SenegalWest Africa

It's also posted on the side of the blog if for some reason you didn't make it this far in this post. Maybe you're rewatching that video a few times, I never know.

For all of those [non-existent] devout followers who want to know my every move here, or for those [more likely existent] occasional readers who simply wonder how an average American recent-college-grad deals with long-term cultural isolation in a desert, I’ve started compiling a list of things I do at site that keep me relatively sane. This actually originated in my journal as a list of things to do when I’m bored, but I figured it might be of some interest to people in that vast first world country that I’ve heard exists somewhere. Here goes- For anyone else who finds themselves sitting in a hut in Africa for two years, here are a few ways of dealing with it, in no particular order: 1) After going to work in the morning, whether it be to the field or to a meeting with the farmers, teachers or communitarial, go back to your hut, shut your door and have a snack that you enjoy. This is the main reason you require so many granola bars in care packages- since apples and other fruit don’t last for weeks in the heat, you can only stock up on fruit for a couple of days at a time. 2) Coffee and occasional baked goods that you cooked in the Kaolack regional house and brought to site in Tupperware can be added to point number 1. 3) In the case of the aforementioned coffee in point number 2, you may occasionally indulge in Starbucks “VIA” coffee packets from the States, shipped over in care packages. [Thanks mom and dad.] 4) Listen to music you like, and lots of it. I, for instance, have playlists put on shuffle for running in the morning, relaxing with breakfast, cleaning around the hut, etc. Exchange music with other volunteers to mix it up a bit and keep things fresh. 5) Make your own music. It’s amazing what a half hour playing guitar and living in your own little world can do for your overall well-being. Singing counts too. Natives find it hilarious, and the advantage is that you can sing whatever you want to in order to get out your frustrations. Curse if you need to, and nobody will understand it. Then you have the satisfaction of bad-mouthing that idiot for proposing to you for the 15th time and the knowledge that you never actually offended anyone. 6) Make friends with teachers. I’ll leave out a long and drawn-out explanation here since my previous entry should explain this, but if you do use this method, be wary of point number 5. Some teachers understand English. 7) Decorate your room with all things that remind you of home, and if you are from the North, cold places. I now have magazine cut-outs of snowy skiing vistas plastered to my wall (thanks to my parents), along with some cut-out snowflakes (thanks to Tim’s last care package) and a string of pictures of my family and friends between them. Check out my pictures if you’re curious. 8) Sleep. Go to bed early, and take naps if necessary. It can often do a world of good. 9) After that 900th conversation about whether or not you have a husband and if so, why do you not have kids, it may be rather rewarding to read something intellectual. It will remind you that you are, in fact, a thinking and educated human being and life is not simply about getting married and having babies. Malcolm Gladwell books (author of works such as The Tipping Point and Blink) are extremely popular here- I highly recommend them. Peace Corps is also a great time to catch up on all those books you always told yourself you would read and never actually did. 10) Sometimes, you need to counteract point number 9 with point number 10- reading something trashy. After a long day in the field, at meetings and struggling with grammatical points in Wolof or teaching your counterpart how to amend the soil and why nitrogen is important, curling up with a Cosmo magazine and oogling at pretty dresses and cute shoes can be real therapy. 11) Stay busy. The first few weeks at site are shockingly difficult to a self-defined overachiever who always had a full schedule until now. Get involved, make your own schedule and stick to it. If that means you are forcing yourself to sit and scarify seeds from exactly 3 to 5 PM, so be it. 12) Text people in the outside world. If someone texts you on gmail, you can respond to them cheaply rather than having to write a text to an American phone line and use up all your phone credit. 13) Get exercise, especially if you were one of those athletic-types in the States. It’s hard in the heat, but if you force yourself to wake up before dawn every morning and get out for a short run before it gets hot or do some yoga ever day in your backyard around sunset, your body and mind will appreciate it. 14) If necessary, spend money on phone cards for your internet key and spend an hour online browsing facebook and chatting on skype. If you are so inclined, you may also update your blog and blab about how you stay sane at site to your captive audience. As a quick, somewhat-related addendum to this list, I will include another how-to: how to keep cool while writing a blog entry. 1) Soak a bandana and wring it out. Wrap it around your head, including your forehead. Fan yourself for a minute with a little plastic Senegalese fan. Continue typing. Now, if you ever find yourself out in the middle of nowhere with the job of planting a bunch of trees in the African Sahel, I hope that you can do it with ease and grace. Thank you. ~E

My ability to read many books in short spans of time at site is dwindling, seeing as I am actually doing worthwhile things with my time now, but I did find the time to start reading Teacher Man by Frank McCourt. I haven’t finished it yet, but a book discussion is not the point of this entry. Instead, it just brings to light the fact that seldom do we take the time to thank those who spent countless hours marking up our poorly-written commentaries with red pen and, as one of my college mentors might say “making it bleed.” It’s amazing how so much constructive criticism can keep you in your place. I could go on about the merits of teachers, how they helped me get where I am here and how they are entirely underappreciated the majority of the time, but that would simply be inflating their egos and is beside the point. Instead, there actually is a point to my discussion of teachers in relation to my life in Senegal. The past week I have been busy setting up my projects for the upcoming planting season, and it occurred to me that thus far, all of my best friends and work partners in this country have been teachers. Most of the reason for this is that teachers are by far the most educated people in the village. When you are normally lucky to talk to someone who has been to a couple years of grade school and can read a word or two, it is a breath of fresh air to talk to someone who has been to college and can have an intelligent discussion on the differences between the democratic and republican Senegalese parties, or who at least has heard of people like Michael Jackson or Bill Gates. It is not fair of me to expect educated people here to know American music when educated people in America rarely could name the most popular singer in Senegal, so I don’t take it for granted when I can play a Panic at the Disco song on my iPod and have a Senegalese friend recognize it. Oumi and I have had a couple of nights when we rocked out to “Hips Don’t Lie” and “Promiscuous” while the villagers watched on us amusedly. Of course, it is nothing out of the normal for us to act completely over-the-top and theatrical, so nobody asked any questions. Teachers also have turned out to be fantastic work partners for agroforestry work. Back when I first installed (almost 5 months ago now!), Oumi and I walked over to Saloum Diane for a day to meet her coworkers over there, and I met one guy who wanted me to take a picture of him in the classroom. I did, and spent the next several months making excuses that I could not print it for him since I had not been to a location that prints photos. Then, a few days ago, I took a trip over to our neighboring village Keur Serigne Bamba to check out some Jatropha live fences and Ziziphus trees there, and found myself greeting him there. Apparently he lives in Serigne Bamba and just stays in a room in Saloum Diane on weekdays to teach, but he took me over to his field of 40 hectares to check out some agroforestry species. Let me assure you, nobody I have ever met in Fatick region has had a field of 40 hectares- that is simply incomprehensible when you consider that there are no machines doing any of the work in the fields and very little agricultural education. He demonstrated some of the unique trees he was propagating for live fencing, most of which Peace Corps is trying to promote itself, and referred to them by their scientific rather than their local names. He also had examples of grafted Ziziphus and mango trees, which is extremely rare in a village since it requires technical skill other than what you learn through trial-and-error. Projects with schools themselves are also much more rewarding when you see eye-to-eye with your work partners. The school garden I am working on in Babou Njiti is probably the most fun I’ve had at site, since each time I go there we get to work in the garden, I spend a bit of time in the classroom teaching about American culture or English, then we go back to my friend’s hut where we have real conversations and joke about music or American food. Thus far, I’ve begun teaching the male teachers over there yoga and salsa. Apparently, they’ve been practicing. (As a side note, for anyone who ever plans on joining Peace Corps, learn some yoga. It’s probably the best exercise you can get given that you live in a hut and everyone laughs at everything you do outside of it.) Within my home village, I had a meeting with the teachers yesterday planning what types of projects they want to accomplish while I’m here. We sat together in the small office and discussed logistics in a very organized and pointed way, which as an American used to meetings about projects rather than short discussions involving tea, I appreciated greatly. As of now, we are planning a small windbreak, live fence, shade trees and a few fruit trees, in addition to supplemental environmental education classes explaining what we are doing and small side projects like murals and book donations. Speaking of which, if you keep up with this blog and have actually read this far, that probably means you either need to give me money or send me a care package. Money is in the form of a donation to our book project in which we will be contributing kids books in French to form a small library and provide teaching resources for a school that has none. Here’s the link: ________ ­­­­­­­Care packages must include small scientific demonstrations: a small set of magnets, a compass, plastic thermometer, books with pictures of the human body or small models of it, or whatever you have lying around the house that takes up very little space in a package but would be of great interest to a village-bound 7-year old are all appreciated. American snacks for me are also a must. So in conclusion, don’t forget to thank teachers for the differences they’ve made in your life, whether or not you were actually in their class. Alternatively, you can simply thank a Peace Corps volunteer for being awesome. You know it’s true. ~E

Well, the last few weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind. Since I left you, I went up to Thies for the Agroforestry summit, then spent an extra day there for our Gender Awareness and Development program summit, traveled to Dakar where we spent a day presenting our projects to NGOs in Senegal and hearing about their programs, and finally got to see the infamous West African Invitational Softball Tournament. (In case you haven’t figured it out, the abbreviation for that would be WAIST. I’ll let your imagination wander.) The agroforestry summit was informative, and it was great to have a chance to get to know all the other agfo volunteers in country that I would not otherwise have much time to see or interact with. We went on field trips with guest speakers to learn about some projects outside our normal realm of work such as poultry farms and fish farms, conducted a seed exchange that allowed us access to many seeds for our upcoming projects, and we pooled our energy to complete a small project trenching mango saplings in the agfo teaching area at the training center. That afternoon, my friend and old homestay village-mate Peter and I traveled back down to good ol’ Keur Madaro to catch up with the homestay families and go on a seed hunt for Acacia melifera, a thorny live fencing species. It was great seeing my homestay family again; I’ve visited them twice now, and it’s a good benchmark for how far I’ve come since leaving training. Each time I visit them my language skills are a bit better and I feel more confident in my work and daily life here. It’s a pretty rewarding feeling. Our 1-day GAD conference was also interesting; it gave us the opportunity to see what other volunteers in country are doing in relation to helping women and girls become educated and be more independent in society. We also had a chance to discuss GAD work in relation to our sector- in my case agriculture. GAD work is built into every sector to some degree- I have to work with women’s groups for gardening and teaching them improved farming techniques and hopefully marketing techniques for their vegetables and seeds. I would also love to get involved with girls and exercise. Since the village finds it hilarious that I like to run and play soccer with the boys, maybe it would be fun to start a running club. Amazingly, and it’s hard to believe I’m already saying this, it might be hard to find time now that I’m starting to get really busy. The all-volunteer NGO conference was a good experience to present our projects and see what other NGOs are up to, but it was rather overshadowed by the fact that volunteers were reuniting, tired from traveling, and starting to get pumped up for the upcoming madness that is WAIST. Just being in Dakar is an experience in itself. We went out to fancy restaurants and real diners. One night I had Thai food, another I had sausage pizza, and the last night we had a barbeque at the American club and ate grilled chicken with garlic mayonnaise and pasta salad. It was a beautiful thing. There’s a mall along the shoreline that as my friend Teresa puts it, “looks more like America than America.” We ate ice cream and went to an American-style diner called Times café where we had (ready for this?) mozzarella sticks, garlic cheesy bread, and fancy coffees- I ordered an mint mocha latte. Ahhhh heaven does exist after all. WAIST is a whole other ball game (haha get it?) As a representative of the Kaolack region, I donned a tutu with the rest of the team and pitched softball for a couple of innings against the Gambia, an NGO team and the northern region. The rest is pretty self-explanatory, because only a few things can happen when you get all of the PCVs in West Africa together, give them a softball field on the ocean in Dakar, and then put them all in a club with a pool and a bar. Needless to say, pictures are posted. Originally, I thought coming back to the village and going back to daily life after that would be rather difficult, and much as it hurts to write about all the good food I had when it is now far, far away, it’s actually rather refreshing. I don’t feel healthy gorging myself on calories and just having fun all day after a while. You just need to get it out of your system and then go back to work. Therefore, I’m surprisingly motivated, even in the face of the oncoming hot season, to get myself back on a routine. This applies in all aspects: exercise, diet, work schedule, sleep schedule, etc. For example, for the past couple of days I’ve been waking up early to run before it gets hot out, then I’m off to the field to water my garden, and I’ve been talking to farmers and planning projects for the planting season. Tomorrow, I’m going back to Babou Njiti to begin outplanting the school pepinieres with the students there, and by next weekend, I have to go back to Kaolack for a meeting about the Moringa tourney we are planning. So as you can see, after a brief yet lovely diversion hanging out in mini-America, I’m hitting the ground running. What do you know? I’m actually starting to feel like a real Peace Corps volunteer. Still, that doesn’t stop me from missing snow. I’m writing this with a piece of damp cloth wrapped around my neck to keep cool. Gotta keep everything in perspective. Love from the desert, ~E

Over the last few weeks, it has started to occur to me just how much I take basic information that we learn in elementary school for granted. I never realized before I came here how when you talk to somebody in America, you automatically assume they have an education level of a certain degree, which is an easy assumption since it is illegal to drop out before you have at least reached high school. Here though, I often find myself trying to have certain conversations before stopping myself and realizing that I need to back up- a lot. This morning, I was out in the field chatting with Pape about time zone differences- that if I call my family when it is 11 am here, I will certainly be waking them up since it is 6 am over on the American eastern seaboard. Somehow he ended up asking a question of direction- so if Banjul is in this direction (points south) and if Dakar is in this direction (points northwest) then where is America? I have been continuously trying to explain that America is a very large country in comparison to Senegal and hoping that it will click and they were remember at some point seeing it on a map and remember that-oh yeah- it actually is rather big. It never occurred to me that maybe they have not even seen a map of the world before. I asked Pape if he had, and he replied that no, in fact he had never seen a map of the world before. This man is about 35 years old. In all my attempts to explain that America is a very large country and you can’t simply describe what the weather is like over there in a short statement, it somehow slipped my mind that I took for granted the fact that as you go north in the world it gets colder because of the tilt of the Earth in relation to the sun, or the fact that there is more than just water that separates Africa from America- there is an ocean there. Also, airplanes move quite fast. If I am in an airplane for 8 hours versus a bush taxi for 8 hours, I will get much farther in an airplane. Telling them how long the flight is will not exactly convey the distance of the trip. There is a whole slew of other things I often take for granted about talking to people with a certain level of education that I have only just started to think about after half a year in this country. Literacy, which I’ve mentioned before, is a big one. It doesn’t quite occur to you just what the implications are of not being able to read until you try to work with these people on a daily basis. People keep asking me to teach them English, assuming they know what that entails. I now respond by asking if they can read. Often, they say they can’t, and now I have to try to explain to them the importance of writing down words and reading them over in order to memorize them or understand the necessity of a pronoun and an article. When they go to the doctor, they receive a small slip of paper similar to the ones we get on appointment cards saying when to return- those are rather futile if they can’t be read. Lately, we’ve been watching TV in Arame’s room since the AC/DC converter has been working at night, but I wonder how it interests them so much if they can’t understand the majority of what is going on when the news is all in French. The other night, an American action movie came on (I don’t know what it was but it took place on a cruise ship which is hard enough to explain as it is) and it was dubbed over in French. At one point, a woman in the movie went to a stage and started singing and the dubbing went away, so that she was speaking in French but singing in English, and I laughed at the irony of it. Almost all 20 people in the room with me turned around and wondered why I was laughing- many of the children don’t know that white people speak more than one language, too. The other problem was that this movie came on right after a news reel about a demonstration parade in Dakar involving thousands of people walking down the street holding signs and marching bands playing. For someone who has never been out of the village life, how to you distinguish between the reality of this gigantic mass of people on paved streets surrounding by tall buildings in this country and the American action film that followed it? I’ll leave my education rant there to comment on the consequences; in short, development cannot progress without education. You don’t really notice it until you’ve been living here a while- as you try to talk about abstract concepts, technology, or the outside world, things simply go over many peoples’ heads and they lose interest or assume you are trying to speak Wolof and don’t know what you are saying. On the bright side, education is actually a large part of Senegal’s overall development strategy. The other day, Ousman told me that when he was a kid here in Keur Andalla, there was no school, and he had to travel to go to elementary school all the way up through university. Now, almost every village in the general vicinity has a French elementary school in it or within walking distance. Ousman and I both agreed that over time, the general level of literacy and education in the villages will start to increase as the current generation begins to mature. The school here, after all, was built less than 10 years ago, so the current adult generation is mainly uneducated. Even if they never progress to middle school and high school, the ability to read and write a little bit and perform basic arithmetic will make a world of difference within the next generation or two. Especially with the extension of infrastructure such a electricity and water availability that permit more widespread use of technology such as cellphones, television and internet, people will begin to see the necessity of education and understand the concept of globalization. Inshallah. I am, after all, posting this thought to the internet for the world to see from my cozy little hut in Africa. That has not yet ceased to amaze me. Love from the Sahel, ~E

After a relaxing couple of days in the house, I am back to the grinding stone- planting bananas. I helped Abdou Aziz plant a small plantation of around 10-14 banana plants in a swampy part of his field last week before I went into Kaolack, and now I’m at it again. Though the water requirements for banana plants is very high (around 20 L/day/plant) they are also very prone to rotting, so I am a tad bit worried that they might rot too much before the hot season really starts. I suppose we learn by trial and error, and I tried to make that clear to my work partners- if this doesn’t work, please don’t hate me forever. Yesterday, Pape and I went over to Keur Chorno about 2 km away with the donkey charette to visit his friend’s field and cut a bunch more banana suckers (the small offshoots from the trunk that you plant to propagate bananas) and ended up with around 33 plants. We brought them back to my hut and put them in my backyard for the afternoon, and this morning we lashed small piles of bananas onto the back of our bikes and brought them out to the field. We spent a lovely morning digging holes, amending them with a manure mixture and filling them in, and planting small banana plants. After all this work, here’s to hoping they grow (raise imaginary Nalgene bottle with me.) I’m also working on my demonstration plot. Many of the seeds that Peace Corps gave us during install are not growing, and I have had to go to the market and just start buying some seeds of my own. God knows how long they were lying around in the training center before they decided to get rid of old seeds by handing them out to unsuspecting newbies. At any rate, I finally have something green that is sticking out of the brown stuff underneath it, and one would only hope that it is actually a plant. I have now seeded and reseeded my damn pepinieres around 5 times since install and have nothing to show for it. Moringa beds are a similar story. I originally seeded the bed, and it didn’t grow. I thought birds ate the seeds, so I reseeded it and put branches over it to protect it from birds landing there. Once again, it did not grow. Pape then told me the other night that a small animal- a gecko as far as I can get from the rough translation, has been walking in a line after I plant them and eating each seed in the bed in succession. Today I seeded it and put dead grass over the whole thing to prevent it. Here’s hoping, again. (Cue to raise Nalgene bottle a second time.) To wrap up, here’s a funny cultural anecdote to hold you all over until my next entry. Yesterday, on the way to Keur Chorno, Pape pointed out this little footbridge in the middle of a field that spanned a small eroded area. He told me that when black people build a bridge, that is how it turns out, insinuating that blacks are less skilled than white people. I then asked who built the bridge we have in Keur Andalla (there’s pictures of it in the album if you want to see- it’s pretty nice). He responded that they were black too, but they were outsiders. I laughed and said, “so they were black toubabs” and he laughed an agreed. The moral of the story, in case you missed it, is that Toubab is supposed to define the color of your skin here, but it really has less to do with that than Senegalese people think. It’s really about societal status and where your family comes from. If you live in upscale Dakar but you’re still Senegalese, you may very well be a toubab, but it really depends on who you ask. At any rate, to drive the point home that the black people who built the bridge were toubabs and I was not, I drove the donkey cart home. What stupid creatures. Until next time… ~E. Oh and PS after I wrote this Oumi and I cooked French Fries to portray American food to villagers who don’t know what ketchup is. You might call it a cultural exchange. I thought it was the best excuse ever to eat American food at site. Yum.

It’s been a little while since I’ve written in this, and that is possibly due to the fact that I left myself internet-less for a while, not realizing that the fixed line I have been using is not set up to work with Windows 7 that I have on the new netbook. That will be fixed by buying an internet key which works in a similar way but doesn’t need to be charged the way a regular fixed line does, and it is a bit more expensive. At any rate, I’m typing this offline to be uploaded in Toubacouta tomorrow when I go help out some friends with terracing a garden. It’ll be a long day. On the homefront, things have started to happen at site! After starting my demonstration plot and planting my moringa intensive bed, my friend Byron came to visit me for a day and helped me get all my project ideas into a real schedule. It is amazing how much better it can make you feel when you actually have a purpose in life. During his visit, we went to the fields to look at some of the work I’ve done already and determine logistics on things such as how many seeds I will need for live fences, where I can obtain them and when I should be starting them. By this point, I have a pretty good idea of what my life is going to be like up until the next rainy season when the pepiniering season comes to a close and outplanting begins. If that is jibberish to you, that means that we have to first seed the trees, let them grow a little bit in tree sacks where there is greater soil retention and less risk of insect attack, then we take the seedlings and plant them in the ground to their final site right after the rains begin and they will be watered around June or July. The other great thing about visitors is the food. Senegalese love to impress their visitors, so the quality of the food is substantially greater if somebody comes to say hi. Unfortunately for me, I live out in the middle of nowhere and it is difficult for most volunteers to stop by, but when they do it is a good day for me and my stomach. For dinner, they cooked chicken with a macaroni sauce- a huge treat, and for the following lunch we had a rice dish with onions, carrots and fish called yassa. Yummy. Since Byron’s visit, I have started to have more of a direction to my daily schedule, which is reinforced by my farmer counterparts in the village. We talked to a farmer named Abdou Aziz about planting bananas, for instance, since he has abundant water sources in his field and plenty of overgrown space that can be cleared and used. We also talked briefly about the uses of Neeme, a common tree in Senegal that has insect-repellant properties and can be used both in the field as a preventative pesticide and on the body as a regular bug spray. Today, when I got back to his field, he had already gone to a neighboring village to obtain some banana plants that we can plant, and he had attempted to make a neeme solution for his garden. Unless you are a volunteer, it is hard to describe just how amazing it is that a farmer simply took you at your word without seeing it in practice and went ahead and tried it. The small victories can really make your day. Now all of a sudden, January is almost over, and soon I will be traveling to Thies for the agroforestry summit and Gender Awareness and Development seminar. Afterwards, we get to go to Dakar for WAIST, the West African Invitational Softball Tournament. It will be a welcome break from the village for a week or so, and hopefully I will come back rejuvenated and ready to get some of these pepinieres up and running. One can always hope. Missing home lots. ~E.

I started another garden today. Things that I learned as a little kid are really starting to be enforced- if at first you fail, try, try again. In this case, it applies both to the demise of my garden behind my hut and to the minor failure at teaching soil amendments the other day. Before I went to Sokone for language seminar, I went out to the field with the women in the village who were starting their plots. They were digging, and I decided that it was time to take initiative and try to explain soil amendments and their benefits before they get everything planted. I tried to speak up, and some of them clearly had no idea what I was saying, so it turned into a random mess of some women trying to throw green leaves into a pile to just mix into the soil at random. My uncle came over to me and said some people didn’t want to do that because it was extra work, and I tried to show that it really wasn’t that hard to strip some leaves from some trees and put them into the ground. In an awkward turn of events, somebody then got a phone call that someone in the village had died and everyone had to go home. The plots still haven’t been finished. Now, however, I am learning from my mistakes and I am making some big compost piles for myself, pepiniering in an area where there’s water and good soil, and in a public location where it will be easy to teach and discuss with people. This doesn’t mean I won’t retry planting in my backyard- it’s really convenient when I don’t feel like leaving my hut to just say I have work to do in my garden here. It’s also probably the most control I have over any one location since it is protected from goats and locked away from little annoying children. A public garden space has its benefits though- it’s close to outplanting sites if I want to pepiniere some live fencing species for the women’s garden next to it, and it’s next to the women’s plots that they had started so they will have to walk by my garden every time they go to work there and see my moringa beds I plan to plant- free advertisement of the fact that it is, in fact, important for them. At least that’s how it works in my mind. Speaking of moringa, I will be traveling into Kaolack for a moringa tourney meeting in a couple of days, and this being after I just got back from my language seminar in Sokone. It is amazing that now that the 5-week challenge is over, I really am out of site a lot. Thankfully my counterpart/dad Ousman understands; I applogized that I had to travel so much the other day and he was perfectly ok with it, explaining that he knew I was learning and the village would ultimately be able to benefit from it. I can’t claim to love spending as much time as possible in the village, but traveling so much takes its toll on you when you are trying to form relationships with people and when it’s a minimum of waking up at 4 am and traveling on an overcrowded bush taxi for 4 hours just to get into the regional house. I justify it by thinking that I will have some bragging rights among other, less-remote volunteers later on. That, or I’ll just start complaining all the time. On a completely different note, did anyone make New Year’s resolutions? Mine is to make it through the year. This year is bound to change me in ways I can’t even imagine and present challenges that may be harder than anything I’ve ever had to face, so wish me luck. Here goes, 2011. ~E

There’s a certain point when you know you’re a real Peace Corps volunteer, and sometimes that comes when a project you put tons of time and care into fails. I came home from the regional house the other day for Christmas, and was extremely happy that I had brought home my guitar and finally had a chance to practice and play for my family here a little bit. Unfortunately, the first thing I noticed is that my entire garden was wilted and dead, guava pepiniere included. There were thousands of little insects running around, and then when I showed Arame what had happened, she was super surprised. She is generally responsible for watering my garden while I’m gone, and she doesn’t mind doing it, but she failed to notice that somebody has placed a large pile of peanut fodder next to my millet fencing by the horse stable, and the bugs were emerging from it and eating everything in their path. After hearing tons of stories from other volunteers about trees being demolished by goats and people failing to water their pepinieres, I feel that I can now contribute to the pool of Peace Corps failures and be initiated into our world of disappointment. At least I can be thankful that my diet is not dependent on my garden and I will still have dinner tonight. I can’t imagine what it is like for farmers who have their harvests demolished and nothing to sell or eat. Makes you think. Another thought-provoking conversation: women in Senegal. Learning about women and gender roles here is an ongoing process, but the last two days were especially weird for me. Yesterday, I was helping Arame cook lunch by cutting onions and garlic for her, and I noticed an empty packet of birth control pills in the binoir next to me. I asked her who owned them, and she hesitantly said that she did, and asked if I knew what they were. I replied that I did and explained, and she was embarrassed, assuming that I wouldn’t be able to answer. After reassuring her that it is more than just ok, I explained that I thought it was fantastic and many women in America use them as well, and if she has any questions she can feel free to ask me. It is extremely liberal and forward-thinking for a Senegalese woman to wait until after 20 to have a child, then go on birth control to prevent from getting pregnant immediately afterwards, and I am very proud of her initiative. On the other hand, Hadi, my younger sister who is 15 or 16, has a child a year old, and I just noticed today that she was pregnant again. This is not particularly unusual, but it is sad that I can actually notice a real difference in both Diama’s and Babacar’s mannerisms and maturity levels both at a year old. Of course every child is different, but Diama is clearly learning more about the world at a faster pace than is Babacar, since Hadi is not nearly as attentive or caring of a mother as is Arame. The differences in education level show as well; though Arame did not make it much past an elementary school level, she can read a bit and understands a little bit of French. I don’t know any other women at the top of my head that can read anything in Keur Andalla (aside from Oumi, but she is an outsider as well) and this became a topic of conversation today. Seey, my neighbor, looked at my book that I was reading today, and I asked her if she could read. She adamantly replied that she could not, so I asked if she wanted to learn. She basically replied “Sure, if you’ll teach me” so I told her there was a class in Saloum Diane for women to learn to read. She laughed at me and told me there wasn’t any time, she has to cook lunch and go pull water from the well every day, how could she ever think of actually learning something else? Meanwhile, Arame will occasionally pull out her old French books and study with me when I get up the motivation to review my Wolof books, and she keep telling me that she wants to go back to school and continue her studies despite having to raise Diama and cook and pull water just like all the other women in the village. Remember in my last blog post how I wrote about the differences in education level and how people can compare themselves to one another easily here? Case and point. Anyway, tomorrow is New Years! God knows how I will make it till midnight seeing as I generally pass out before 10 here, but I’m sure I’ll figure something out. A group of us are meeting up in Toubakouta, renting out some rooms in a campemont, going out for a nice dinner and potentially jumping in the delta. Should be a good time- much different than the American version of the festivities, but fun nonetheless. Enjoy it everybody, and here’s to a good 2011!

So I had this great blog entry going about my two weeks in Thies; what I learned, how I plan on applying it, what I did there, etc. But in the in the end, I really just spent two weeks being an American with other Americans. We went to restaurants, went to class every day, learned all sorts of interesting skills, but in the end, it wasn’t a particularly inspirational cultural exchange. I learned all sorts of interesting things in college, too, but you won’t find any blog entries detailing my new fact of the day from the last four years. Onto the village. I am just about done spending a few days at site before I travel to Kaolack tomorrow for Christmas. Yes, I’m Jewish, but the idea of sitting at site while everyone is out partying just seems too depressing, so I will be sitting in the regional house enjoying ample free internet and kitchen space instead. In the meanwhile, I figured I’d write my blog entry at site, where I am surrounded by my inspirational African coming-of-age stories I know you’re all just dying to hear. So here goes. At the all-volunteer conference, we got the chance to see the “universal nut sheller” in action. It’s pretty cool. It’s this crank-powered machine that will shell peanuts at the rate that 41 women can in the village by hand, thus saving time and allowing them to make a greater profit each season. Peace Corps was advertising it as revolutionary and able to really improve the lives of rural women who spend much of their free time next to little stools developing calluses. I came back to village with pictures to show Ousman and stories to tell. Then, yesterday, I was walking over to my hut when I saw some kid and an old-rusty looking crank-powered thing turning out a bunch of nicely-shelled peanuts into a sac placed clumsily underneath. It sort of reminds me of a fable I read in a Central American literature class in college- a priest gets lost in the woods and is captured by Mayans who are going to sacrifice him to the gods. Thinking he can outsmart them and trick them into thinking he has magical powers, he tries to tell them he knows the moon will go out at a certain time the next night since he knew about an upcoming solar eclipse. Instead, the Mayans sacrifice him while reading off a list of the previous, well-documented solar eclipses that have occurred over the last few thousand years. I’m glad my stakes for underestimation were not as high as that priest’s, but the lesson is the same. Don’t assume that people are innocent or lack knowledge by their socio-economic status or rural location. In my case, I shouldn’t overestimate them either. Yesterday morning before going to the fields, my pregnant neighbor came into my hut asking me to read a doctor’s slip for her so she can know when she should go to the local health post for her checkup. The rate of illiteracy here is something crazy around 50% overall, but it is much higher for women and gets progressively higher as villages become more rural and isolated. Keur Andala is a strange place; while my counterpart is practically more educated than I am and can afford such novelties as solar panels and a tin roof, my uncle keeps asking me to buy him a cellphone, something even my pregnant illiterate neighbor owns and asked me to coordinate with my watch on the way out to the field yesterday. Apparently anything the white “toubab” owns is automatically correct. This also changes my general perception of happiness in developing communities. Thinking I was a smart enlightened person before coming here, I assumed the general level of happiness here would be higher than I was used to; after all, people keep pointing to depression statistics in America. I have seen plenty of publications on how money actually can lead to unhappiness because it leads to a false obsession with material objects and a lower appreciation for the “little things in life.” In contrast, people have this idea that these small villages and tight-knit families are happy because they appreciate everything they have and work for. The large span of knowledge and control of money seems to crush this theory, for all intensive purposes. Now that people here are becoming less isolated and ever so slowly more westernized with their cell phones and Shakira’s “This is Africa” playing on the radio non-stop, people are more aware of what everybody else has and what they don’t have. Not that they are all out to cut themselves the way American media might lead you to believe, but at the end of a Sunday when my brother comes home from the market and I ask how his day was, he always seems to respond, “not so good- there isn’t any money.” So that’s my Peace Corps insightful story for the day. On a less profound note, my quick life update: I’m slowly but surely starting to get into some real work here. My garden behind my hut is actually growing, I moved and rotated my pepiniere into a sunken ditch to hold in water and put berms around it this morning, and I’ve started visiting my uncle’s garden. He’s got a lot going for him, and it is a mini paradise with water and pepinieres galore- a regular nirvana as rural Senegalese communities go. The second time I went to visit it, though, I had a bit more time while I was helping to harvest rice to really observe some of his techniques, and I realized he could benefit from a lot of little changes- berms and terracing to help with water retention, pruning his mango trees a bit more, making some compost piles… there is work to be done. I’ve also spent a few days back out in the peanut fields, this time sifting through the dead plants and separating them with the wind. I’ll try to get a few pictures of that before the season’s over, but I wasted my camera battery taking pictures of the garden the other day. I’ll post those tomorrow. And PS, I figured out how to do multiple captions on google albums, so if you were curious about the subjects of my photos, now is the time to go back and look. I’ll leave it at that for now. Hope everyone has (or had) a great holiday! Much love from the west coast, ~E

This past week, all of the volunteers in country and several volunteers from Togo, Niger, The Gambia, Mali and Burkina Faso gathered at the Thies training center to participate in the West-African All-Volunteer Conference and share best management practices from the field. Volunteers had the opportunity to present individual sessions, participate in workshops and round-table discussions, and see a few of the “appropriate technologies” that have been introduced to aid in development efforts. As a new volunteer, it was a fantastic opportunity to hear about many of the current projects, what made them successful or not, and pick people’s brains from around the country. I must say, after weeks of sitting at site, not knowing what to do or how to begin, it was an extremely refreshing and motivating experience. I attended a workshop on grant-writing in the Peace Corps, a discussion on GIS use in the field, various smaller sessions on project sustainability and environmental management, and learned a bit about projects outside my sector such as literacy and sanitation. Some of the more interesting points I brought away included how to collaborate with NGOs and use multimedia as tools both in and out of the field. I will make sure to write a more in-depth post on development from a PCVs perspective, but I can definitely see an expanded use of technology in the Peace Corps network to start building a base of institutional memory and improve or streamline training sessions. For instance, volunteers have started using video and audio clips to help refresh technical skills of volunteers and train counterparts while carrying out a project or aid in communication when language barriers present a problem. Many volunteers now have radio shows that are pre-recorded and edited in collaborations at regional houses or in local cities, and digital on-line dictionaries help volunteers keep up-to-date on local language terminology. Every year, it becomes easier for more volunteers to have internet at site due to the proliferation of cell keys for laptops, and netbooks increase the portability and ease of that information. Most of the larger, more successful projects are conducted by volunteer cross-sector collaborations, so the benefits of easy communication, documentation and resources are clear. Some volunteers believe that having access to technology at site impedes community integration, but I believe that if utilized with an awareness of the culture and individual community, it will continue to be a beneficial tool to aid in development work. But enough of that rant. I am currently in IST; our stage in-service technical training. We spend two weeks at the center specifically concentration on technical skills and project development, so when I go back to the village, I will really have more of the knowledge and ability to start small projects and begin to build my credibility as a knowledgeable community member. I am motivated to learn about cross-sector projects and how to integrate knowledge from different areas to really get everything you can out of a project. If I spend a lot of time and effort growing and installing a live fence, for instance, what will the benefits be in terms of vegetables grown in the garden and how will that benefit the village in the long term? A quick training on healthy diets, for instance, would encourage the villagers to consume some of those vegetables rather than selling them all for profit, or a marketing lesson would allow them to sell some vegetables at a higher profit and allow them to buy materials to make an even more successful garden in future years. While all this is occurring in Senegal, it is the holiday season back in the States. So happy shopping people! I can’t believe that this time last year I was preparing for finals, planning ski trips and bundled up in blankets and jackets. It’s still hot here. That’s what happens when you live in the dessert in Africa. Not that I should have to ask for this, but make sure you all take plenty of snowy pictures for me! I’m pretty sure that a few good magazine spreads of ski pictures will end up in my hut before the end of the winter. Oh, and PS: Happy Hannukah! ~E

Blog Entry: Hey lookie here! I’m updating my blog from site! My host family compound has solar paneling, and my host dad is patron enough to have a fixed line in the house, and he offered me to use it to get internet access once the AC/DC converter was up and running. Basically, I got sick of waiting and bought it myself as a gift for Tabaski and to provide myself with free electricity for the 2 years that I am here. It turns out the internet I get through the fixed line is quite cheap and faster than the internet in Kaolack since there are normally 10 or 11 computers trying to use internet at once in the regional house, so this is a pretty good option. At any rate, I will be here for 2 more days, then I travel to Thies for our all-volunteer conference. We get two days of meetings about best-management practices in the field with volunteers from all over the country and a few from surrounding countries. Then, IST starts, and I have two more full weeks of sitting in class learning about agroforestry technologies. Ironically, I am actually super excited. It will be nice to see the rest of the stage again, be out of the village for a bit, eat training center food (it’s amazing the things you appreciate being in the village) and have a bit of fun. I also plan on visiting my homestay family and seeing how they’re doing, considering they’ve been calling me continuously since I left. It’s cute, but the fact that I haven’t really called them back on a regular basis makes me a bit of an asshole by Senegalese standards. There are a few times when I absolutely refuse to be part of Senegalese culture- calling everyone I know on a regular basis just to see if they’re doing ok is something I do not plan on doing. I came to a realization though- being a PCV is strikingly like being an RA at site. Everyone is watching you all of the time, they see you as some form of authority figure but that does not necessarily mean they respect you, you are living “in a fishbowl,” you have to plan program and projects in your community, and you are responsible for presenting a good image all of the time to represent American culture. It’s also funny; I was remembering the weekly reports we used to have to fill out about our floors, and all of the questions still seem to apply: which new resident (villager) have you interacted with this week? What situations have you encountered and how have you followed up on them? What are you doing to keep yourself healthy and deal with stress? The list goes on. When all else fails and I am going crazy, I usually remember how in some ways, nothing has really changed. The sad part is, I used most of those comparisons during my interview for Peace Corps. I now realize why my recruiter decided I was a good candidate. Apparently, I said the right thing. In terms of work, yesterday was actually somewhat successful! I sat down with my counterpart and two very motivated local farmers to decide what the overall needs of the community were and what types of projects they were interested in carrying out so that I can do the research for them while I am in Thies. I explained some of our training and offered some ideas, but it seems that people are particularly interested in “diversifying” types of fruit trees being planted, protecting fields, starting a bee-fodder project, fish farming in our little pond, and soil stabilization to prevent continued erosion. We’ll see how many of those projects get started or turn out to be successful, but now I feel like I’ve made connections and have a goal in life. It’s a pretty good feeling. So I’ll check in again when I’ve made it safely to Thies. Remind me not to overuse my computer at site- I found myself looking through old pictures a lot in my hut halfway through writing this entry; I’m hoping that does not become an addiction. Homesickness is a painful thing sometimes, but I’ll leave it at that. Love and miss you all! ~E

Wow, I have failed miserably at this whole blogging deal over Thanksgiving, as normally I would be much better about getting a good entry or two up as soon as I got to Kaolack. But here you go. I successfully made it through 5 weeks of sitting at site, not doing anything particularly productive with my life, not quite knowing the language or people who live there, and essentially wondering what I got myself into. I made it through Tabaski and endless hours of sitting, peeling and cutting onions to cook the Tabaski meal, and watching them kill sheep. Little background information- Tabaski is the Islamic holiday that celebrates the story of Abraham and his willingness to kill his own son to prove his faithfulness to God. Most of you know the story or some variation thereof: at the last minute, God informs him that he should sacrifice a ram instead. In order to celebrate this, Muslims decided that they should do the same, so everyone kills sheep throughout the country and has large, meat-eating celebrations. However, the process of killing and cooking the sheep is not exactly the clean, well-run operation that you would imagine in the states. People dig a hole in the ground to drain the blood, everyone brings their sheep or goat over to the communal killing location, and they ceremonially saw off the sheeps’ heads with machetes. There are a few pictures of the killing in the Tabaski album if you’re curious to see the gore. I’ve got a video too if anybody is really sick in the head. The problem with this whole Tabaski process is that it is almost entirely based around the cooking process, and in Senegal, cooking is exclusively the women’s job. This gets really annoying when you consider that my sister Umi went home to her family in Foungioune for Tabaski, my mom Arame got very sick, and I have a small enough family that much of the cooking responsibility fell to me. After spending hours peeling onions and cutting up chunks of meat, we had to wait until 3 in the afternoon to be able to serve the men food. Another hour later, finally, women were able to sit down and actually eat the food they had been cooking all morning. But before they could do so, they decided that the whole community must eat exactly the same meal, so they put all the cooked food from all of the bowls from all of the families into one large bowl, mixed it, then redistributed it back into the bowls brought by all the women. It was a rather odd process. Everyone then dressed up, and many of the younger people went out dancing each night. I did my best to make an appearance, but I have decided that Senegalese dancing is probably better watched than done, especially if I am going to be here for two years. By the end of the five weeks, I was definitely ready to get out of site. After days of sitting in another culture, isolated from friends and family and not having much to do, I was beginning to lose my patience. A visit to Cassie’s site did the trick. I traveled down to her site just north of Karang to see her lovely agroforestry projects and get inspiration for my own in the future. We wondered around all morning, chatted, saw some lovely live fencing, and decided that it made no sense for us to sit around and do nothing all night when we had a free afternoon to travel into Kaolack, so we came into the house for the night and had a chance to hang out with friends a bit before the madness of Thanksgiving occurred. Thanksgiving itself was lovely. I was responsible for making pies, because as those of you who know me probably know, I am much more of a baker than a cook. I really miss baking in the states- our ovens have pilot lights, temperature gauges, and are big enough to put more than two tiny pies in them on its single rack at once. However, it was still a good time hanging out in the kitchen, listening to music and baking with friends. After two full days of cooking and baking and 5 mil (about 10 bucks) a person, we put together a true Thanksgiving feast of turkey, green bean casserole, deviled eggs, macaroni and cheese, sweet potato casserole, a few other vegetable dishes, corn bread (we actually had to pound the corn meal from scratch), sangria with orange slices actually floating in it, and pumpkin, squash and apple pies. I am pretty sure I have never been more full in my entire life. Definitely a success. And what do you imagine happens when you have 41 just out of college kids in a house after a good meal hanging out in a house together? You’re probably wrong. We sat around, complained about how full we all were, watched a movie, and went to bed. Thanksgiving, no matter where in the world you are, is not a giant party. That tryptophan gets you every time. I bought an AC/DC converter for my family so I will be able to charge my computer at site! That means I will have internet access as soon as that gets hooked up and I can secure a wireless key, so I look forward to skyping and emailing all of you on a more regular basis very soon. Also, I found a volunteer who is leaving soon and is actually planning on GIVNG me his guitar, so I will be saner at site in the future, inshallah. At any rate, it seems that the worst of the at-site insanity is over, but I have a long way to go, so we’ll see how this journey plays out. In the meantime, I will be traveling into Thies for our all-volunteer conference on Thursday, so I will soon again have internet and bring you the next episode of these ramblings. Until next time, ~E

Day trip to Sokone! I’m pretty sure that I need to stop showing up at other volunteer’s doors asking to use their computers to type blog entries. If I get into that habit, it may not fly so well when this whole adventure is over and I’m back in the land of the free. Can you imagine- “Hey neighbor, how’s it going? Just gonna sit and watch your TV for a while because I don’t have one yet. I’ll only be a little while, thanks!”Maybe not. Public transport situation is getting slightly better. One of the advantages to living in a remote village is that there is only one or two cars you can use, so you get to know the drivers pretty well. In fact, I now have the phone numbers of the two bus drivers that go to Saloum Diane or Keur Andalla saved in my phone, which makes it much easier when I go into a crowded garage and the one car that is going to my destination recognizes me and makes sure I am on it. When I got off this morning, the driver left me with strict instructions on where I should sit and wait for him, what time he will be back this afternoon and how much it will cost to get back. This is all well and good, other than the fact that to get here, I woke up at 4:15 am to catch the bus at about 5, then sat as it drove over rough bush roads honking its horn to wake everyone up and alert people of its presence for the 2-hour trip into the city. You give a little, you take a little I guess. Everything in Senegal is a tradeoff. At any rate, the 5 week challenge is coming into its homestretch! We are more than 3 weeks in now, and within the next week Tabaski will occur, which is sort of equivalent to Easter in the States. It comes about 2 months after Korite, as you may have noticed, and involves many of the same traditions- women braiding their hair and buying new clothes, getting dressed up and cooking fancy meals involving meat and onions. It should be a good time. I am, however, avoiding markets at all costs from here on out until after the holiday is over, because I do not want to deal with frenzied Senegalese trying to buy their goats last minute to kill for the holiday. So maybe it’s not exactly like Easter but you get the idea. I’ve noticed lately that very little goes to waste around here, though an outsider would never know it by all the trash in the streets. Things get reused all the time for various purposes that Americans would never think to do. This is mostly because we have access to buying products that usually fill that purpose, and the old saying of reduce, reuse recycle is rarely taken to heart when a vendor has a product that fills the exact purpose you were looking for. I have started following along with this trend, and have become increasingly more creative with my use of products I may have previously disposed of. For instance, when the cable to my hut broke and I was solar lamp-less for a few days, I had to find a way to hold a candle.Given that the boutique next to me doesn’t even sell bread never mind candlesticks, I used a small cardboard box that had contained the lighter for my gas stove and filled it with dirt to hold the candle in place. When I painted my room, an old coke bottle with the top cut off proved to be the perfect container to mix paint and paint thinner. When I was breaking up the soil in my garden-to-be, a ripped up plastic sheet that was stuck under the ground seemed to be the perfect cover for my compost pile (banana tree leaves work well too), and the chaco box that my parents sent a care package in work great as a clothespins holder. Senegalese use a cleaned-out tomato can as a cup for water so often that when cooking, the can itself has actually become a unit of measurement. I feel like this is a good trend that I should bring back with me- if anybody is in, we should start a club. The 4 Rs- Reduce, reuse, recycle, for real. Please don’t make fun of my humor, I’m a geek and I’m proud of it. My village had a big day yesterday! As I was chilling and reading my book in the afternoon, my family told me that there were a few Toubabs walking around. I found that hard to believe, so I got up to investigate, and sure enough a group of three white people and two other Senegalese were wondering around taking pictures of trees. Much as remote peanut-farming villages in Senegal seem like the most desirable place in the world for a nice relaxing vacation and this seemed entirely normal to me, I decided to go introduce myself anyway. It turns out that and NGO collaboration consisting of Plan Vivo, BioClimate and some professors from the University of Dakar were investigating a group of villages in the area and scouting out potential host sites to start some research on agroforestry techniques there. Hah! Now I know that as a PCV I am expected to find out what other organizations are active in the area and try to form connections and collaborate on projects, but I did not expect one to show up knocking on my door. They were unaware that a PCV was present in village, since most of them are based out of Denmark and Scotland, so we talked a bit and tried to figure out what each organization was up to in the village. They proceeded to sit my chief of village and half of the village down and explain the benefits of agroforestry and try to gauge their interest in participating in projects with the NGO. As far as I have gathered, there is no definite that they will return, and they are simply trying to do surveys of potential sites before selecting specific villages to work with. An exciting day for the village for sure, but no guarentees that anything will happen. I still feel as though my work has officially started; I got to act as a delegate for the village, share information, speak in Wolof (they had to bring a translator) and gain some contacts that may be useful in the future.

Yay I have a computer! I apologize in advance- this might be long. I don’t have computer access that much these days, so I take advantage when I can. Biked into Toubakouta to hang out with Garrison and Amy and see civilization for a few hours. Sometimes I forget what it looks like. Granted, our definition of civilization is a bit different here- if I can get a bean sandwich in a little shack and speak English with another volunteer for a few hours, I’m a pretty happy camper. The ride in is really beautiful- it is about 4 kilometers to Saloum Diane on a sand road, which is a pain, then a little over 20 or so into Toubakouta on a laterite clay road. It’s about a 2 hour ride, so you can imagine I will be in pretty damn good biking shape after 2 years of this. Pan-Mass challenge, anybody? I showed up at another volunteer’s door randomly since the internet café next door was going to charge me a mil an hour to use the internet, which is ridiculous in comparison to the 300 I paid in Sokone. Now I am sitting and typing on his computer while he does laundry, and I will upload this in a little while at a campemont with internet access. Eventually, I will have internet at site, so that should solve that problem. Last Thursday, I went to a groupemont training down in Karang on the border of the Gambia. To get there, I stayed overnight with a study-abroad student in Saloum Diane and caught a sept-place at 6 am down to the city, and a Peace Corps car brought us over to the garden. Translation, for those of you who are not yet fluent in PC-Senegalese: a groupemont is a small organization of women who share a garden space and help to maintain it, then split the profit of what they make as a result of selling their produce. This is one of the major goals of the agriculture section of PC Senegal- working with women’s groups to enhance gender equality by providing women with the means to create their own income aside from what their husbands allow them and teaching them agriculture and agroforestry techniques to increase yield and sustainability. I watched as women dug zai holes and terraces into the land, and helped a bit despite the heat. Zai holes are small round holes about 20 cm deep that you dig into a slope and plant field crops in such as millet or corn, and you form a berm around the downhill side to catch water when it rains. Most of you are familiar with terraces- flat areas of land built into the side of a hill where you can plant crops. Senegal is not exactly known for its rolling hills and slopesides, but it is a useful technique even in a very minor slope where any water that can be caught should be use effectively. Both the zai holes and the terraces are then amended by digging the crop area and adding composting materials such as green leaves, brown leaves, manure, and charcoal as a carbon source. Sometime in the near future, planting will begin for dry-season gardening. Believe it or not, this concept actually exists- some plants can tolerate a drier climate, and if watered to a certain extent, can be a productive use of time and effort during the dry cool season in December and January into the warmer dry season later in spring. I’ve got some pictures of all of this, but you have to wait until I get back to Kaolack to see. Gotta keep everyone in suspense somehow. Enough of technical stuff. Want to know how we buy things in Senegal? We go to Loumas! Loumas are open markets that occur weekly in certain villages, and comprise much of the major economic exchange in remote villages where regular markets don’t exist. Aside from a few boutiques scattered throughout larger villages (my village only has 1 because nobody likes us) most people do their shopping and selling on a weekly basis in the market. The major louma near me is in a village called Touba Mouride, and it occurs every Sunday. I have two options for getting there- pay 250 CFA to take an overcrowded car there at 6 am over a horrible road with tons of products to sell strapped to the top and wait at louma until 5 to leave, or bike. The bike ride is about an hour long, but entirely worth the trip, as you can well imagine. The other day, I biked there and met up with my sister Umi and Amy, my neighboring volunteer. Probably spent too much money (because the equivalent of 20 bucks American is a huge deal here) but I came home with some lovely spoils: a giant clay pot to keep water cool at site, materials to build a door for my backyard, extra paint thinner to finish painting my room, margarine, some bananas, and some bread. Yesterday afternoon, Umi and I attempted to finish painting my room- still a little bit short on the paint thinner, so I bought some more today in Toubakouta, but it’s an activity and a welcome break from going to the field. As you can imagine, transporting everything home was an adventure in itself, so the clay pot was strapped to the top of the car that Umi took home, the wood for the door was lashed to the horse charet that my brother took into louma, and I biked home with a backpack full of bread and bananas and not quite enough water. (I learned my lesson, I have more than enough water for today.) Most of my time in market, I found myself missing the malls back home- the food courts there are a far cry from the small tin shack that I got a bowl of rice with a piece of fish in for lunch, and lord knows some Ben and Jerry’s ice cream afterwards from Providence Place would have been lovely, but you learn to live without it. I know my sister (my real one) has been dying to hear about my “daily routine,” so I will do my best with what semblance of a routine exists in my life. When staying in village, I usually wake up at 7 am- right after the sun comes up, and heat up water to make coffee. I turn on my ipod and sit on my plastic mat in my room and set up everything to make breakfast- usually some bread with some jelly or honey- and chill out while drinking coffee and taking my sweet time to get ready for the day while it is still cool outside. I brush my teeth with a water bottle and put out my solar charger for the day. I will eventually be able to charge everything in the house where there is solar electricity, but I’d prefer not to take advantage all the time. Afterwards, I emerge from my hut around 8 am or so to go greet my family while they are cooking breakfast and sleeping- Umi is still sleeping if she’s not teaching that day, and my mom and taking care of baby Diama. She is my 1-year old younger sister, and I love her probably more than anyone in the village. I then go back to my hut and leave the door open so people can greet me while I do a little bit of work preparing to the plant my garden- I have a small compost pile going and I’ve broken up the soil and constructed some bad-ass handles with eucalyptus branches with a machetti. (Sorry if I’m repeating anything, I don’t have internet right now to check back on my old entries.) When my mom is ready, I go out to the field to help pull up peanuts until noon, then we come back and I take a short bucket bath and rest for a while before lunch. We don’t eat lunch until 3 normally, so I have a small snack and hang out until then. The afternoon really has no rhyme or reason to it. Eventually, I will use it for real work time, but right now I spend a lot of time hanging out with the women, picking peanuts off the plants we brought back to village, having tea, and doing other random tasks (such as painting my room) and needed. We eat dinner around 8 or so- lately we’ve had millet and beans just about every night. It’s not that bad, at least it’s palatable. In some villages, I’m pretty sure it’s difficult to eat whatever was made. On the other hand, some people cook for themselves or are more urban and live with patron families that cook better dinners. I’m in the Peace Corps- I take what I can get. Speaking of taking what I can get, many of you are wondering what strategies I use to stay sane while living in a remote village with no good electricity, pulling water out of a well, no internet access, difficult transportation and no English. I have a few things that keep me relatively happy. My morning routine is a big part of that- it’s amazing what an hour of having a cup of coffee and listening to familiar American music does for your morale each day. My sister is another big part of that. She gets that it’s difficult to come live away from your home and give up comforts that you are used to, especially when you are educated and can look at the world around you with a more critical eye. I have had many conversations that have ended with “Xamunu dara u aduna…” They don’t know anything about the world. Just hearing that she gets it, even if she doesn’t speak English or has never been out of Senegal, is a huge help. I can tell her whatever, and she doesn’t judge. She knows what skype is and has relatives in the States, France and Italy, so she understands a bit more about where I’m coming from. It’s also nice that I can put on a Goo Goo Dolls song and she will have actually heard it before, which is more than I can say about Senegalese music before I came here. Talking to people in the states (echem thanks Tim) and writing letters home makes a huge difference too. I really do love sharing my experiences with people, hence this blog, and hearing what is going on back home. Just knowing that someone had a difficult day at work or that the Patriots won or lost makes me feel a bit more connected to my life back home. Things like today, biking into Toubakouta for the day, make a big difference as well- like I started this entry with, a bean sandwich and a good English conversation makes a world of difference. Feel free to call me any time you like, you might be lucky and I’ll have reception and we can talk about your life. I don’t judge. And before I ramble for another few pages, I’ll leave it here for today. Probably will update again when I get to Sokone for my mail and language seminar in a week or two. More about that then. Mucho Senegalese Amour, ~E

I am here at a cyber in Sokone where I came in to meet some volunteers, check my mail and buy some stuff. Its a pain typing on this though since it is a French keyboard and I almost have to relearn to type everything. But lots to say, so Ill do my best until I can get on an American computer again, preferably mine.

My site is lovely! Pics to come when I get back into Kaolack, which will be Thanksgiving. Where do I even begin? I have a small family, which is a huge change from my homestay site where I was surrounded by tons of people all the time. Now, if I need to get away and rest for a while, that is perfectly feasible. I have a backyard where I am working on starting a garden, and my own bathroom (a hole in the ground wth some concrete and a millet fence surrounding it). I actually have my own patio, with a little plastic and millet stalk roof covering it, so people can come over and sit on the concrete banister and chat. And best of all, I have lighting!! It turns out that my counterpart is also my dad at site, and he is pretty patron, so he installed three solar powered lightbulbs in my hut; one inside, one in my backyard and one on the front patio. It is rather convenient.

As of right now I dont have a bed, but I commisioned a local artisian in a neighboring village to build one, and we are going to get it back on a horse drawn charette in the next few days. Yes, I will make sure to take pictures of that. For the time being I am sleeping on a cot I bought in Kaolack before install and my camping mat on that. For what its worth, it gets the job done.

My sister and mom make my life a much happier experience as well. My sister, Umi, is the same age as me, and she is amazingly not yet married. She has a boyfriend in Keur Saloume Diane, the aforementioned neighboring village, and she always pretends to deny it, so I tease her. She then proceeds to tease me back about my boyfriend, who I refer to as my husband here in Senegal so as to avoid a long cross cultural discussion every time I mention him. Umi is the only person I have met in Senegal so far who can go toe-to-toe with me when I tease her for something. We actually managed to start dueling with our spoons at the dinner bowl the other night, which progressed into a pretend kung-fu match, and eventually ended up as an all-out wrestling tournament. Sometimes I wonder about my own antics...

My mom, Arame, here is adorble. She called me yesterday while I was at another volunteers house in Sokone to say goodnight and check up on me. I am pretty sure I never really appreciated people always checking up on me back in the States to see if I am ok, but now in this foreign culture and place it means the world to me to know that I have support and am not completely on my own all the time trying to figure out what I am doing. Oh and ps, I`m pretty sure she is the same age as me, but Senegalese have a habit of never telling you their real age. It is not an embarresment thing like it is in the states, but more of a superstition. And for clarification, Umi and Arame are not actually related; Umi is my sister because she has a room in the house with which I am associated, but she is just living in Keur Andalla for a while because she is a teacher there.

Usman, my counterpart/dad, normally stays in a room that he has in Saloum Diane because he works there. He comes home a few times a week to see the village and spend a bit of time with Arame and Diama, their 1-year old baby. Diama is adorable and I play with her all the time. She`ll get into her terrible twos while I`m living here, so maybe it`ll start to get annoying, but 2-year olds can be cute too sometimes.

There are two major downsides to my site: first, it is the most remote site in all of the Fatick region. To get to Sokone, I biked around 48 kilometers yesterday, mostly on a packed laterite road, which is basically a red gravel and clay mixture. In the future, I can take a car from Saloum Diane at 6 am, but that involves waking up and walking 4 km to Saloum Diane before it is light out through the fields, probably not the safest means. Otherwise, I can bike on the bushroads which I have not yet learned about 25 km here, which is better distance but worse quality roads and may just be annoying. I guess I`ll learn my options quickly enough.

The other downside is water- I do not have a robine (tap) at site, so I am pulling water from a well for everything- laundry, drinking, showing, watering my garden, etc. It`s amazing how much you are concious of your water usage when you have to carry every drop you use on your head for about 150 meters. Really makes you appreciate showers. I am starting to get the hang of it; it will definitely involve some next muscle strengthening before I perfect the art that is carrying binoirs of 10 gallons or so of water on your head.

I haven`t started any major work projects yet, and I don`t plan too for a while. We won`t hqve the training for it until after IST in December. Right now, our jobs as new volunteers is to integrate into our communities, learn everybody`s names, settle, start to form ideas about where we would want to start projects in the future, talk to other volunteers about their work, and start to pinpoint potential work partners outside of just our counterparts. To start, however, I`ve already started a guava pepiniere as part of a reserch project for one of our PST trainers, and I plan on starting more of a garden in my backyard. I am also learning to cook Senegalese dishes, and generally I go out to the fields with the other women in the mornings to pick peanut plants and help carry a few back to the compound. It`s pretty hard work, but I do enjoy getting outside and having something to do rather than just sit and drink Senegalese tea all day. My sister and I are also going to paint my room tomorrow or the day after, should be fun!

Ok well my time at the cafe is running out quickly so I`ll wrap this up. Now you can all start sending me packages! Easy mac, instant oatmeal packets, granola bars, and American candy/chocolate is all apprecited.

love you all from across the ocean,

~E

At the regional house in Kaolack. I will probably be posting entries from here and cybercafes in Toubacouda from now on. It's a pretty neat place to just chill and relax with other volunteers, and it is stocked with a library of books that volunteers brought over the years, a guitar, and NesCafe. Yes, we drink instant coffee because the alternatives are either difficult and time-consuming, expensive or non-existent. But I digress. As the title of this blog indicates, and the main reason for me posting a blog entry two days in a row, is that I got my mailing address today! See side bar -------------------->>> So now all of you lovely people and can send me stuff. It is a shared box with 3 other volunteers, which is good because a) I spend less money to have the box and b) if my site mate happens to be in Sokone, she can pick it up for me and bring it to me, enabling me to receive mail slightly more often. I don't know what the situation will be like for making it there, but at the very least I will receive the gifts that you bestow upon me every other week or so. This morning we went out and bought a ridiculous amount of things for install. We need to buy all sorts of new tools for gardening, kitchen supplies, storage containers, buckets and baskets for showering, etc. I will also have to aquire a bed at some point along the lines, but I may end up buying a cot to hang out on and sleep on until I can find a better solution. Most volunteers said they found an artisan or someone in a road town near them and hired a charet- a horse-drawn carriage- to get it back to site. I’ll take pictures believe me. Side note-while writing this blog entry my homestay family called me to say hi. They call me every day to tell me that they miss me and make sure I’m ok. I miss them. Senegalese phone conversations are very bizarre; I’m pretty sure the cellphone has not been a common item until recently, so local phone etiquette is much different than it is in the states. People will answer their phones no matter what- Aissatu used to answer her phone in the middle of the class all the time because it would be rude not to. My two older brothers from homestay- Mousa and Alisou, call me all the time just to tease me and reference our old inside jokes. I used to call them my “nari jafe-jafe,” my two problems. They teased me so much that I joked about how I loved everyone but them because they were “sy-sy” or teasers. I definitely want to go visit them all whenever I get a chance to get up to Thies. Ok I’ll wrap this up for now seeing as I’m probably blabbing on now, but I will soon have stories about install and my site. Ba benen yoon (until next time) ~E

Swear in! A lot has happened in the last few days. It’s all pretty overwhelming actually. Let’s recap: Wednesday- last day of classes. We finished logistics and review of our final language exams. And guess what? I scored advanced low for Wolof! (There’s a breakdown of novice, intermediate, advanced and superior for languages, and we’re required to achieve intermediate-mid to swear in. Thus, I win.) Also got perfect scores on my tree ID and tech exam, so if you’re are ever wondering if the tree you’re looking at is a Delonix regia or a Leucaena leucocephala, hit me up. We had a soccer match of staff vs. trainees Wednesday night too, which was rather amusing. Senegal vs. America minus 2 or 3 American trainers. The soccer game is a tradition at the end of stage, and America has lost the last 10 years in a row or so. Last year they did not even score. This year, we lost 2-3, so all things considered, I’m pretty proud of us. I got to play about half the game, and there’s a couple of pictures in the swearing-in album. Thursday- Family reception! Fatou, my homestay mom and namesake, came to the center and brought her baby, Ndaiy, with her. It was really nice getting to hang out with her one last time and enjoy a good meal. We had a small ceremony for the families and gave them a chance to speak to everyone, and everyone wished us luck and congratulated us on making it through PST despite the obvious difficulties. Friday- Swear-in! We all shipped it to the ambassador’s house in Dakar where we immediately commenced picture-taking and head-scarf wrapping (see pictures) and watched the ceremony. It was a bit like graduation all over again- they had speeches, had us take the oath of service, and 4 of the other trainees gave speeches in local languages that they had prepared ahead of time. Then they called us each up to receive our official PCV ID cards and documentation that we are, in fact, part of the organization. The important thing occurred after the ceremony- food. As any PCV knows, good food must be cherished and hoarded, and they had lots of it, so we ate all sorts of fun delicious American finger foods. Afterwards, we got on the bus, went to the office to do the necessary paperwork, and proceeded on to the so-called “American Club” where rich white people go to send their children to school or go swimming. It is actually called Club Atlantique, but they have American food and menus in English. We jumped in the pool, had a beer and chatted with other volunteers who came to share in the occasion. It was, all around, quite entertaining. Today- moving. I packed up all of my stuff, went out to lunch with some friends, and now we are waiting for the busses to take us on the bumpy pot-hole filled road that leads to the magical land that is Kaolack. More madness will occur- moving all of the stuff I own into the house (there’s more than I stared with because we now have so many things that Peace Corps gave us or we bought here), and we also have to store the major purchases tomorrow- beds, trunks, cots, etc. We’ll see how that goes. I cannot believe that I am already going to install. In some ways, it really does seem like we just got here, and in some ways, I have been over training and ready to move on for a while now. I guess that’s what happens with everything- it was the same with graduation too. I miss college to no end, but I can’t imagine wanting to go back and start classes again at this point. Life moves on. On another, related note, I am surprisingly ready to go back to the village now. Yes, it will be stressful trying to integrate into a new family, and it will probably suck a lot going back to village food and lifestyles, but it is also quite tiring having ceremonies and going out with people a lot. It’s fun at first, but after a couple of days in the center, the idea of going back to someplace quiet, having some time to myself to organize, collect and read a book actually sounds quite tempting. Also, I know it will not be as bad as going back to homestay the first time. While I am by no means fluent in Wolof, I know I can start to converse, talk about myself and express my needs right off the bat. It’s useful. I am also looking forward to having a routine again- not having to think too much about my daily activities to make sure I am not pissing anybody off. By the time I was done with homestay, it was normal for me to go running or change in the shower. It takes a lot of stress off of having to explain yourself for every stupid little thing you do. Also, I got amazingly close with my family in the two months I was there, and then we had to leave. Now, I get to bond with my family and actually stay for a while. I still get calls daily from my family saying hi and good morning or just teasing about random jokes we have. It’s sort of hard to talk on the phone in Wolof because a lot of the conversation is lost when your communication ability depends greatly on gestures and facial expressions, but we get the point across that we miss each other and they want me to come visit when I can. I suppose I’m going to go need to buy more phone credit soon. So before this gets too long, you can check out pictures of swear-in now on the picassa album! There’s a whole album for soccer, family day and swear-in that I posted. Also, I should have my new address when I get to Kaolack later so I’ll be able to post that, and care-package sending can commence immediately thereafter. An idea that Tim and I started- take videos of stuff and put them on an old flash drive or burn them to a cd and send that. That way, I don’t have to depend on the internet to download stuff about your lives, and you can give me tours of things like new apartments (you all know who you are) or projects/bands you are working on. I’ll be putting together a flash drive on my own and shipping it back to the states once I get a chance to settle into site and get some videos of it, so you can see glimpses of my life here and hear a bit of Wolof. Look for that probably in a month or two. Thanks for everyone’s support and emails, you mean the world to me. ~E

Wrote this yesterday then my computer decided it didn’t want to connect to the internet, so here we go. Thank god for Word. Sort of sad story. We were supposed to have our final language tests in the village this morning and then have the afternoon to pack and spend the last few hours chatting with our families. This morning, as I was reviewing for the exam and chatting with my siblings, Spencer showed up at my house telling me that Aissatu was sick and a car was already on its way to pick us up. I rushed to put all of my things together and said a relatively quick goodbye to my family as I tried to explain that no, I was not going to be back that afternoon, and I will see them when I can go visit in December during IST. (IST, for those of you who are lacking in Peace Corps lingo, means in-service training, and occurs a few months after our initial PST when we all go back to Thies for a couple weeks to do some more advanced tech training.)So thus I am back in Thies, took my language exam with the program language coordinator while my teacher recovers at home. I would have left around now anyway, but still, I will miss them. Posted a few pictures of the last few minutes at homestay on the homestay album. I am about to consider my online album organization a lost cause and start from scratch after swear-in. At any rate, the last week of homestay was pretty nice. We took an afternoon to come into the market in Thies so I could print some pictures for the family and get an album to put them in as a last nice gift to them. Also, the three of us trainees all bought chickens for the families to make a special last dinner with them last night. It is a huge treat for them to have chicken or any sort of meat, so despite the fact that I am now out about half of my walkaround money, it was a worthwhile last thought. Chickens here run around 2500 CFA each, which is the equivalent of 5 dollars American. I bought three for the family, which in America is an extremely cheap last gift, but considering the fact that I make 28000 CFA (about 60 bucks) every other week, it was a pretty significant gift. Now, the madness begins. Tomorrow we have a few wrap-up type of sessions and logistics for swear-in and install, and then Thursday afternoon we have our family reception! Fatou, my training mother/counterpart/sister will come to meet me here and we can dress up and have good food and dance, then it’s D-Day! Swear in occurs Friday in Dakar, pictures and stories to come. We have a day here in Thies preparing, and then we’re off to Kaolack house for 2 days to go buy stuff we need to install into our new homes. Me, Amy, and Garrison will be going to a hotel in Sokone for a night on the way to Toubacouda to make transport for install easier the next day, and finally, on the 20th, I move into my “dekk bu bess,” or my new home. Logistics for you lovely people back home: don’t send stuff to the Thies address anymore, since it won’t get here on time. Stand by for further instructions, since I’ll be getting a box in Sokone in a few days that will likely be a shared box with a couple of other volunteers. I will explain when I know more. When I get to Kaolack, I will posted a wish list, since it seems many of you lovely people are interested in sending me presents from the States. I cannot express my true and undying gratitude if you decide to do so, as it is amazing what trivial items you appreciate when you do not see them for a long time. As always, stay tuned. Love from Africa, E

Finally changed the background of my blog! So now instead of some random road picture that google provides as a template, you can see an actual African scene- taken by yours truly behind my homestay house. Enjoy it.So I swear in as a full PCV next Friday. There are parts of training that went by incredibly slowly, and heaven knows I'm ready to get to site and start to gain my independence back, but at the same time I almost can't believe that I've been in country almost 2 months now. I can only imagine how fast time will go by once I'm at site, into the swing of things, comfortable with my family and language and have regular projects going. That may be a stretch to think of now, but one can always dream...For the time being it's back to homestay today for the last time. I am actually excited this time- I love my family and I know it will go by super fast; I am now comfortable in the village and we will plan a really nice going away dinner or something with the other PCTs in the village. I think we might buy some chickens and kill them for a final night or something- that's pretty special for people there because chickens are expensive. I'll also be pretty busy wrapping up our garden; we have to figure out who will continue it and maybe train a few people on watering or making a fence around it. First experience with really training people in country. That's not to say that I actually really know what I'm doing yet, but it's a start. Keur Madaro has survived without us for a long time and will continue to survive without us after we leave, so I'm not that worried. Not to mention we'll be back- IST is at the beginning of December, which is not that long away. It seems like a long time, but in the life of many plants and trees, it's just a drop in the bucket.At any rate, the beach was fun. We took two Alhums (the big white van-like busses) down to Poupenguie (not sure how to spell that) where Kelsey's site will be. It was gorgeous, and it was a welcome break from the normal day-to-day that is class, translating every thought I have into Wolof, and digging in the dirt. The occasional beach vacation can do a world of good. I posted pics too- they should be under the PST album if you're curious. Since I'm bad at putting captions up, you'll see the cliffs and some other rock formations. Some artist carved random statue figures into one of the formations and you can see a picture of this face that greets you when you go to climb on the rocks. It's pretty cool actually. You can climb up to the top of the little island and look out at the ocean too, so Garrison and I went exploring there. Lauren and Rachel hung back, but me, being the natural rock climber/lover of heights, I climbed up the rock wall and checked it out. The other cool thing- the water here has plankton with bioluminescent proteins. We learned about them in school, and I remember all sorts of research and biological advantages to them, but nothing compares to how cool they are when you go swimming in the middle of the night and all the water sparkles white around you as you move your arms. Definitely up there with the coolest things ever. I'm a geek and I'm aware of that fact, so I will probably research what type of protein they produce and what biological function it performs. We also had Dakar day yesterday. All of us piled into some PC cars in the morning and shipped out to downtown Dakar, which is a very bizarre experience after living in the village on and off for a while. In the nicer areas of Dakar, it feels like you are in a French version of NYC. Street vendors are everywhere, expensive brand name stores line the streets, and it is easy to go to a fancy restaurant and spend all your money on one meal. There are also a lot of white people in parts of it- you never know what nationality, but along the road of embassies you suddenly feel like you are no longer in Africa. This further emphasizes the separation of upper and lower classes in this country. Most of the wealth is located from Thies and west into Dakar, but as you move in any other direction from here, the landscape and overall socio-economic status changes dramatically. I guess that's where we come in.Ok I've been rambling now so I'll leave it here. I'll be back in Thies next Tuesday night, and then stay tuned for swear-in! I'll have plenty more to share soon.Love from Senegal,~E

I’m sure that none of you were losing sleep after my last blog post mentioning my recent illness in country, but just in case you were intently waiting for an update, I just got the test result that I have amoebas. It’s funny how all I can think of is going back to high school and looking at the prepared iodine-soaked slides under a microscope of those little critters, and now they are alive and well, floating around in my intestinal track. A month ago, this may have freaked me out a bit. Now, it is a relatively normal occurrence that is quickly taken care of with Peace Corps’ readily available supply of medication. I swear I will dread the health care system upon my return to the states; I am spoiled here, medically speaking. In other news, I get to go to the beach tomorrow! Every year, the new stage takes a day to put together a trip to a house on the coast as a chance to get away from the daily grind and relax a bit. I will be a much needed bought of repose, if you will. Pictures are forthcoming as well. Finally, the fun part of this entry- counterpart workshop. I met one of my two counterparts, and his name is Ousman Sy (pronounced Usman See). He is a relatively short and mildly chubby quiet man, all unusual characteristics as Senegalese go. He also has only one wife and one kid, which is also pretty surprising given that Senegalese families tend to be around 10-20 people. He speaks French in addition to Wolof, which is quite lovely, as I was told that being in a village I would have very little chance to learn or practice French. This also means that he knows the difficulty of learning a new language and being able to pronounce it. His Wolof is pretty clear as well, so our conversations are less labored. We chatted a bit, and we agreed to be patient with each other while I learn the language and adjust to the culture. Both of us are motivated to work and make some changes in the village, but from what I hear, the village is doing pretty damn well on its own. It has a few women’s gardening groups that meet regularly, good sources of water, large fields, many trees, and is set in a pretty beautiful location. I learned this from several sources including PCVs who have been in the area, my site information sheet and my counterpart himself. It looks to be a pretty good outlook for the next two years. Secondary projects may become a priority. However, it’s hard to really talk about my work when I have not even seen my village yet. We’ll come back to that, no worries. For now, it’s onto more Wolof-ing and counterpart-ing. Let the good times roll. ~E

Hello hello! Just got back from homestay, part 3. It’s pretty nice now actually, since I have my routine and relationships with my family fairly well established. I won’t lie, I’ve been a bit homesick at times; it’s funny how back in the states you know you take things for granted and you appreciate a lot of what you have (electricity, running water, good food, etc.) but living here you start to realize the things that you really honestly never thought about before. Here is a short list of things that I have now become intensely aware of that never really had that much importance back in the states: · Weather- we do watch the weather in the states. We have an entire channel on TV devoted to it. We talk about it until day’s end, but that’s because we really have nothing better to talk about sometimes. Here, it actually has a real meaning behind it and yet there is less awareness of specific figures. For instance, I’ve realized that I have not actually wondered what temperature it is for a while, but I have an intense awareness of the temperature based on how hot or cold I am. I do not know the weather forecast or the relative humidity, but I do know that if it rains for several days before I travel down to southern Kaolack, I will not be able to get through the majority of the roads because it is not safe. Another thing we take for granted- working windshield wipers/no potholes in the roads. And don’t tell me about the pothole incident on I-93 in Boston just before I left- that is nothing in comparison. · Nutrients in food-another thing that we think we are really aware of but in reality we have no idea. Only once you have been eating a diet of absolutely no fiber or decent protein for a month do you start to appreciate your food in the states. It’s one thing to be aware of it, it’s another to feel the physical effects of not having any real fruits or veggies on a regular basis, and every gram of vitamin you can get makes a huge difference. Suddenly you find yourself becoming intensely aware of your body functions as a result of nutrient intake (can you tell I went to school for science?) and much as we think about calorie intake and nutrients in the states, we get plenty. Once your diet starts affecting your reproductive and digestive systems and your hair growth, then we can start having a conversation. · My own accent- suddenly, I consistently hear what I am saying. Not really related to things we take for granted, but I’ve noticed that I listen to how I talk both when I am speaking Wolof and English. I constantly compare myself to people; even other Americans since this is the first time I’ve really had a group of friends from all over the country. My language group alone consists of some girl from Boston (yours truly), a kid from Washington state and another guy from Memphis. You can imagine that we occasionally have our different viewpoints and mannerisms of speech. · Skin quality- for those of you who know me, you probably know that I’ve dealt with some general acne problems for pretty much my whole life. However, my own awareness of it is different when 1-I am in a completely different climate and 2-my entire family just thinks that I have mosquito bites all over my face. It’s actually funny sometimes because I just go with it, it’s easier than explaining in a language I don’t completely understand or speak that in our American gene pool, we have this common harmless but annoying problem that affects some people more than others. In addition, keeping track of your skin is important here, since there are a lot of actual problems that must be dealt with. Parasites and rashes are common, and I know a lot of people who have already gotten ring worm or creeping eruption (google it) because we simply don’t have the natural defenses to these things. Minor infections also can become a major problem quickly if they are not checked, as we saw with my toe, because our standards of cleanliness here are many times lower than what we are used to in the states. Don’t worry, we’ve been briefed on all these things by med, so please don’t freak out. · Things that keep me sane- this may seem obvious, but most of us have never spent a significant time without the ability to talk to their friends or even other people that speak the same language as you. Everyone hears that people learn a lot about themselves in Peace Corps, and this is why- you spend so much time dealing with stuff by yourself without help or support from other Americans or friends that you really have to know what makes you happy and keeps you calm as a survival technique. This is often reading a book or listening to music or something, but everyone’s got their own ways of dealing with stuff, and we have so few of our normal electronic distractions here that it forces you to learn about new interests and gives you a lot of time to reflect. Not to get too deep or anything, but it’s a thought. · Other random small things you take for granted that don’t require a long explanation- running shoes, tables and chairs, toothbrushes, shingled roofs, real mattresses… the list goes on. So more real updates on my life, now that I have sufficiently bored you- I am legitimately sick for the first time in country. I did pretty well making it this far all things considered, and I’ve had a few moments, but what can you do; it was bound to happen eventually. Yesterday afternoon after class we went to the field to pick some beans with my LCFs sister, and it had been a very hot day. I was feeling sort of tired, and I attributed it to the heat and not getting enough exercise, so I decided it would be fun to go for a walk. When we got there, I started feeling very tired and dizzy, and I sat in the shade to try to rest while the others picked beans. By the time we were leaving, I was feeling nauseous and pretty weak. We walked home slowly, and when I got back I just sat quietly while my family watched, concerned. I figured I had heat exhaustion, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t really sweat since yesterday morning, so I was pretty dehydrated. Last night I started vomiting and having diarrhea, which is not an enjoyable experience, but is less enjoyable with a conservative Muslim family and a squat toilet. I had a fever all night into this morning, and I slept most of the morning and have been trying to rehydrate. So that’s that. The rest of the week was relatively fun. We have a lot more time to just hang out in the community, and we’re starting to have the language skills to chat with people too. Even our formal classes are mostly discussion based. Don’t get the idea that we are all fluent Wolof speakers now- we’re not. A higher level would especially be appreciated in instances when I am trying to explain to my family that I have to take my oral rehydration salts because I am dehydrated and have a high temperature and I don’t really feel like eating, but what can you do. It’s rewarding too when you can start learning things that you would never have understood a month ago. I’ll give you a quick list of the highlights of the week- · Soccer games! We went to two soccer matches and supported our friends from Keur Madaro down in our neighboring village Keur Maggee. I will post pictures of that soon after this post so you can see. It’s a different experience- they play on a sand field and don’t have very many subs, so the poor players are half beaten and sanded to death by halftime. The environment of the game is pretty cool though- women stand with other women and men with other men, and the women all bring bowls or some device to make noise on and sing or chant the whole game. I’ve got a video too- we’ll see if that works. · Modeling with kids- this sounds ridiculous but it’s funny and a welcome break from sitting on a mat. After Korite, there were some high heel shoes hanging out in the foyer, and just for fun me and my little sister started wearing them and pretending we were models walking up and down the runway. I can’t tell you how adorable and hilarious it is to see little Senegalese girls pretending they are supermodels with their oversized high heel shoes. · Running! Probably the best part of my week. My little brother likes running too, so he’s started taking me on some routes to our neighboring villages through the fields surrounding Keur Madaro. The routes are only 3-4 kilometers long total, but I will take what I can get, and I need to start off slow after not running for a while or being used to the heat. Also, I run in my Chacos. Didn’t have my running shoes in the village, and once I did start running, I realized that the Chacos are probably a better choice anyway in the sand and weeds. They’re cooler, lighter and still have support, so as long as I’m not running for any significant distance, they’re the way to go. I think every PCV should have a pair.Ok this blog entry is getting long enough and I’m starting to ramble on, so I’ll keep you updated on my illness and the coming week. We have our counterpart workshop starting tomorrow afternoon, when we will all meet our permanent counterparts for the first time, and the center will turn into one giant mass of 200 people who all speak different languages running around confused and many of which never have seen a real toilet or shower before in their lives. I’m sure I will have some fun stories to share soon. Signing off and hoping to hear from all of you, ~E

Hello world!This is pretty cool, I just checked the stats on my blog and it seems there are a lot of people interested in my life out there! One of the big linkers to this page is PeaceCorpsJournals, which I connected my blog to on purpose to help out all you aspiring PCVs out there wondering what it was like. I know I religiously stalked that site a few months ago, so hope I'm not wasting all your time ;)At any rate, I am currently at the Kaolack regional house for the night where I will be able to come to throughout my service to hang out with other Americans, cook food on a real stove, take a real shower, watch tv, go on the internet (most of my future blog posts will be typed here) and play some guitar! Yes, there is a house guitar here. It's a shitty guitar with no picks or capo, but it is fantastic nonetheless. For those of you who are unaware, I have been spending much of my procrastination time over the last year learning to play, and I even took lessons this past summer for a few weeks courtesy of my lovely boyfriend back in the states. So yes, music has re-entered my life, if only briefly. In the meantime, I have taken to singing to my host family, mostly the little children. When I first arrived at homestay and could say absolutely nothing in Wolof, I saw that people sometimes sang to themselves, so I started to sing in English to myself too. They thought it was hilarious and fascinating, and it was a great bonding experience to share music, which has always managed to bridge cultures and language barriers. And my voice got better. Or maybe I just haven't heard good voices for so long that it seems like it did. Damnit, I'm going crazy and I've only been here a month and a half. But I digress.Volunteer visit was fun, if not as useful as I had hoped it to be. Since I am opening a new site, I do not have former volunteer (onCN in PCSenegalese) to go visit, so I had to visit another AgFo Wolof volunteer in a different subregion. I found out that when I install, I will be the only Wolof Agfo volunteer in Fatick, which is fine. The more I learn, the more I realize that you really can do whatever project motivates you, even if that means doing something partially outside your sector. That means I can work with volunteers in all sectors on everyone's projects. In fact, I just learned that a whole group of volunteers in the Kaolack region are working together from different sectors this coming weekend on a mangrove restoration project. Too bad I could not have sworn in a month sooner; I would love to see how that works. Overall, the visit was fun though. I did get to walk around the village, see what a standard PCV hut looks like and get some information on install and how the first few weeks after swear-in will run, and hear some fun stories. Most of the volunteers that were in the stage a year ahead of us can't believe that a year has gone by so fast, which is promising. I can't wait to be done with training, have a place of my own and be able to establish some semblance of a routine. Moving back and forth every few days gets tiring quickly, and it's annoying to feel like you have no real home. The stage ahead of us seems so well adjusted and comfortable here in comparison. (god help me if one of them reads this blog) The other fun occurrence we got to experience was public transportation- we had to take an Alhum back and forth to my volunteer's site when we went to go visit some other volunteers in Nioro, her local town. Alhum are old vans with some seats installed in them that serve as the public bus system in Senegal, but there are no such things as tickers or money counters like there are in America, so often the people on it argue and try to jip you for being white around here. That was the first time I felt real racial discrimination based on my race here. I had already gotten used to the constant shouts of "toubab!" but having someone put their foot down and tell you that you have to pay more because they think you have more money is a really upsetting experience. We also took a sept-place this morning, which is for longer-distance transport and works between towns and cities rather than stopping off to pick people up along the way. They get there names from the French word for 7 and "place" or places. Sept-place=7 places. They are Peugeot station wagons that must be filled in order to go anywhere. You first go to a "garage" in a town where you find a sept-place to take you where you want to go. You then put your stuff in the car (bags in the trunk cost more so pack light, argue that a small backpack is like your baby that you must hold in your lap, then just get in before they can respond), and finally wait until there are enough people who want to go to the same location as you. It generally doesn't take too long for larger cities such as Kaolack because there is a lot of traffic between those locations, so we only waited 10 minutes or so. Then you pay your fare and go. Upon arrival, you arrive at a ridiculous mess of people, taxis, sept-place, alhums and vendors known as the Kaolack garage, and you get out and book it as fast as you can out of there until you find a taxi that will take you to the house. Finally, you arrive at little America where the relaxation can occur.Speaking of relaxing, I am about to embark on just that. I will update more soon, no worries!~E

Brief update, since I am consistently being told that there are more of you out there than I originally believed. Back in Theis for the night! Korite was lovely, it was nice to have a chance to just hang out with my family a bit rather than having to schedule around going to class. They made a special dish for lunch and dinner consisting of meat, onion and garlic sauce, potatoes and peas which was served with bread, a welcome change from the normal day to day dish of rice and fish or beans. Everyone dressed up too, and it was cool to see everyone’s korite outfits. It sort of reminds me of Christmas in the states; kids have those cute little dresses that their parents pick out for them. The hair is the best part. People spend days ahead of time braiding their hair and adding in fake hair and beads or other sparkly things. They didn’t have time to do mine- sorry to anybody who was looking forward to more Emily-with-braids pictures, but I have some great pics of the kids. And for those of you parents out there who were wondering how mothers in Senegal got their kids to sit still for long enough to have their hair done, they don’t. It is either done in small amounts of time with many breaks over a few days, or the kid is held down kicking and screaming while her mother makes her look beautiful by Senegalese standards. Generally the former occurs, which leads to several days of many Senegalese girls walking around with half-done hairdos for several days leading up to Korite. It’s actually quite funny, and for a minute there I seriously thought I had been transported back to the 80s when some of my younger sisters looked like they had a hard core mullet. Wish I got a picture of that one. Anyway, I had another cultural point I thought it would be interesting to share. We had a class session here in Theis the other day on marketing agro- and agroforestry products. The girl who was presenting explained how she had helped her counterpart to market the hand-made soap she makes in her house. Many women like her make home-made products to sell to the village, but have very little education and do not understand the concept of supply and demand or marketing, or even oftentimes basic mathematics. Originally, soap-woman was making her soap and selling it for the exact price of the materials. Many women also do not factor in transportation cost if they are lucky enough to travel into a regional market to sell their product, and may lose money on it. One may think that the logical answer would be to sell their product for more money, but that’s where an interesting cultural component comes in- women here often feel guilty for making money off of something. I do not know why since I do not yet have personal experience with this, but some people speculated that it may be because they believe that it is the man’s job to make money and not a women’s or because they know that others expect to pay a certain price and feel bad changing it. That fact really hit me for some reason when we talked about it because it has so many cultural and economic implications, and reveals a small hint as to why many developing countries are just that- developing. Think about it, research it, do what you will. I’ll keep you posted if I find out more. Another quick cultural note- I have yet to learn the word for “Please” in Wolof. I asked once, and somebody told me, but I have never heard anybody use it. People also laugh whenever I tell them thank you. Nobody else uses that either. In class, we learned that people don’t normally say thank you, they just remember whatever you did for them and do something for you later in exchange. It just occurred to me today how that is so drastically different from how we were all brought up in the US. There are no Barnie songs for little kids here about how please and thank you are the magic words. Sorry if that brings up any scarring memories for anybody. I meant for this blog post to be relatively short, which clearly I did not accomplish, but here’s the life update section. I go to volunteer visit tomorrow. We will be taking a bus at 7 am down to our regional house in Kaolack where I will meet up with my host volunteer, and we will travel together to her site. I get to spend a few days doing some of my first technical observations about my region and learning about the life of a regular PCV, so I am pretty excited. I have to take pictures of stuff anyway as part of an ecological assignment that is due on Friday (make a powerpoint and tell us in 10 minutes about the ecology you observed) so I will have plenty to share next week. Until next time… ~E

Hi All! It's been a little while. I feel like I have a ton to say and not enough time to say it in, since I have spent a while already on the computer talking to my parents and writing emails. Just got back from our 2-week stay at homestay. And I have pictures! that are uploaded! Doing my best to get captions on them so you know what you are looking at. The internet is always iffy here in Thies, but I am hanging out while everyone else is out in the market or at the bar so I can get some bandwidth to myself for a few. It's actually quite lovely just having a bit of quiet time on the computer after two weeks of tons of little kids crying all the time and not understanding what is going on most of the time. I'm definitely starting to pick the language up bit by bit though. It takes a while and the progress is sometimes painfully slow when all you want to do is tell them about your home in America or express your frustration about learning to live in a new culture, but your vocabulary is limited to saying "I need to go to my room to get some water" or other fun things. Since I know you are all intensely interested in my first real impressions of life in Senegal, I wrote down a few key experiences in my journal to remember to write about later. Here goes- 10 random experiences for you all 1) Mangos. Ker Madaro is known for its mangos. Every day either in the afternoon or evening after class, Spencer Peter and I go into the market to buy a basket of mangoes, then we go back to the school where we can be away from people and speak English for a few minutes and eat them. It's pretty much the best part of my day, and also the only time I get any fiber in my diet. (Sorry to my aunt if you're reading this, but you would hate it here as a nutritionist. They don't exactly understand the concept of a balanced diet in Senegal) 2)Being asked by every person in the street how my fast is going, not seeming to understand that not every person in the world is Muslim. Usually I respond that I'm Christian, which is easier than trying to explain that I'm Jewish, since most of them have never heard of that before. I also don't have the vocabulary to tell them that I am Jewish or explain what that means. It's hard enough for some people in English. 3) Getting my hair braided. This falls under the category of the ‘ngendi,’ the Muslim baptism here. I think I mentioned in a previous entry that my mom just had her baby, and the baptism was held while I was at sight. For this, they wanted to braid my hair and make me look more Senegalese. Rather than doing the typical cornrow type braids we all think of, they made individual small braids around my head so that I looked a bit like a relatively cute alien. I suppose women really are from Venus. OK dumb joke. 4) The ngendi itself. It actually wasn’t as ridiculous as it could have been since it was during Ramadan, so they couldn’t eat during the day. Also, it started thunderstorming and the electricity went out for the evening, so most of it was held inside. I did, however, watch a goat get killed to eat, which was a new experience to say the least. I posted a pic of the dead skinned goat in the album, so be aware. 5) My first charet ride. Also under the category of the ngendi, but deserves its own number. I sat on the back of a horse-drawn cart while the horse galloped through down and I had very little to hold onto. It’s not as bad as it sounds, but still a bit nerve-wracking. They thought it was hilarious that I looked scared. I’m ok with that. 6) Being asked to marry people. I generally ward this off by explaining that I already have a husband and show people a picture of Tim. I get creative with it too. The night before the ngendi my dad had a bunch of people over for a dinner, and one of them started persistently asking me to be his wife. I just kept repeating to him that I already had a husband. My family is already very aware that I am “married,” so they thought the whole situation was quite funny. I started explaining to him, loudly and very slowly so everyone could hear, “IIIIIII HHHHAAAAAVVVVEEEEE AAAA HHHUUUUSSSBBAAANNNDD.” This, of course, occurred in Wolof so I didn’t necessarily understand his response, but my family thought it was hilarious and was quoting me for days afterwards. Humor is usually the best way to respond to any situation, and it does not always require language skills. 7)I have to mention bucket baths and squat toilets. They are not as bad as they seem. It makes you appreciate a real toilet that much more, but most of the day when I’m missing America, I’m not thinking about how much I want to just sit down and go to the bathroom. Seriously people. There are more important things in life than running water. Like chicken Caesar wraps. 8) The night I got locked in my room. Dislcaimer: this one involves bodily functions. My key has been getting stuck a lot lately cuz the door is a bit rusted out. It worked, but lately I’ve taken to using the bottle opener on my swiss army knife to open the door in the morning (it locks with a key from the inside.) As you can imagine, this is probably not the best way to approach the situation, but I already feel like a burden on the family sometimes so I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. The other night, I had a bit more bissap than usual. Bissap, by the way, is the Senegalese equivalent of cranberry juice, made with sort of a hibiscus flower that grows here. It is delicious, and my family knows I like it so they give me leftover sometimes if everyone has already had it. Anyway, nature called, but I had already locked my door. It was about 11:30 or so and people had already gone to sleep, so I tried to pry the door open and the key started bending in the door. After a few tries, the key ended up breaking in half, leaving part of the key entirely lodged in the lock and leaving me stuck in the room having to go to the bathroom after everyone had gone to bed. Not wanting to wake everyone up, I looked around my room for other alternatives. Finally, I saw the plastic Chinese takeout container in the corner of my room that I had been using to soak my toe in when it was infected. I know my mom had been pressing me to bring those to country for a reason… 9) Kids running away screaming bloody murder because they’ve never seen a white person before. One of the funniest experiences I’ve had here, sadly, was walking into a house that I hadn’t been to before. One little boy looked up at me, then realized that I was a white person, and started screaming and crying like he was about to die. I have never seen a kid more scared in my life. Sadly, I found it hard not to laugh. Hope that doesn’t make me a bad person. 10) Saved the best for last. I finally got comfortable enough with my family to bring out the ipod. I’m glad I got the new one cuz it has a little speaker on it, so I can share my music with everyone. People here really do like American music, and I have plenty of it, which makes me popular after break-fast every evening when people are allowed to listen to music (it’s prohibited as a part of the fast for Ramadan during the day). The first night I had it out, all my little sisters were gathered around listening to it and dancing so whatever I put on, including Fall Out Boy and Panic at the Disco. I can also sing along with whatever since they don’t understand anyway and they think its fantastic that I know the words. Finally, I got to the Lion King, and sung and acted out Hakuna Matata for my whole family, which they thought was hilarious. So yes people, I had a dance party to Hakuna Matata in Africa, with Africans. I can die happy. And don’t you dare say that the Lion King does not take place in Senegal since it is Swahili. I don’t care. K So not that gives you a bit of a picture of my life here, I can give you the big news of the day: SITE ANNOUNCEMENTS! I will officially be living in a small village of 600 people called Keur Andalla Wilane, which is in the subregion of Fatick in Kaolack. I am not particularly surprised about my assignment but I am still stoked, since I am within a pretty short ride from the ocean, I am in biking distance of several other volunteers, I can easily get into a small town near me called Toubacouta, and can cheaply and easily get into Kaolack, the regional capitol, for around the equivalent of 2 dollars American. Keep in mind that “quickly and easily” is a very relative term here. I don’t have electricity or running water probably, but that is fine since the solio has been working pretty well for my ipod and phone the few times I have tried it. I am glad I can get internet access fairly regularly to start off in the local town and in Kaolack, and I might be getting internet access at site if I can figure out a way to charge my comp in village and pay for the expresso card. At any rate you will all know in time. Ok I think I have bored you enough sufficiently with my ranting. I will have more to say after Korite when all of Senegal erupts into a crazy mass of ridiculousness. Stay tuned. Love to the states (and anyone reading this abroad) ~E

So a few days ago I got a hangnail. Yes, this seems like a relatively insignificant fact to be posting to the world. However, that quickly turned into an ingrown toenail, which quickly became infected, and by yesterday had turned into a puffy, swollen mess. Since we were supposed to return to the village yesterday, I called med to ask what I should do, and they told me to come to Dakar so they could check it out so it doesn't get out of hand. Infections can get bad quickly here if they go untreated, and in the village I don't have access to basic things we take for granted like showers to keep clean and buckets of hot water to soak infections in. Med put me on antibiotics (which actually reminds me to take that now) to make sure the infection doesn't get worse. It still hurts a lot- I can't put pressure on it and have been limping around for a couple of days now, but that should pass pretty quickly.

The upside of all of this is that I get to see Dakar a few weeks early! Not that we're out in the city or anything, we're sort of stuck in the med hut. The sick bay (med hut) is located in the PC office and consists of a living room with a small library in it, a den with a tv, dvds and several couches, a dining room, a full kitchen with fridge, microwave and stove, and several bunk rooms. The best part- it is air conditioned. I feel like I'm back in America all of a sudden. Unfortunately, we're killing all of our walk around money on feeding ourselves here. Dakar is a place where all the ex-pats come to hang out in Senegal, so prices are that which you would find in America or higher because of shipping costs. I bought a large can of ravioli in the supermarket today for 1900 cfa, or the equivalent of around 4 bucks american. that's a lot when they give you 50 bucks every other week to live off of. I shouldn't really be spending any money when I get back to site since my family feeds me, but I still don't have the leeway to go to the market there and buy a bunch of extra stuff.

The supermarket here is equally as American as the med hut is. It really did look like a regular stop and shop or equivalent, and it was located in what is basically a regular mall with cafes and a few stores. It was culture shock all over again seeing clean aisles of food and supplies after walking through the market in Thies only a few times. I'm pretty sure the next 2 years will just be one giant culture shock, the cause of which varies depending on where I am.

The other nice thing about being here is that I get the chance to talk to a lot of current PCVs of all ages. I've heard lots of stories about traveling, being at site, integration, languages, different regions throughout the country, and just the social every day scene of being a PCV in Senegal. It makes me super excited to swear-in in October. I've got a ways to go, but I'm sure as I start to get the language down better and integrate into my family more, the time will go by faster.

So I'm off- hopefully for real this time- back to the village tomorrow morning. They kept us here an extra night to make sure everything was fine before we left again. I'm sure it will be. Got a few pics of Dakar in the meantime.

Peace out y'all.

~E

I just was skyping with my dad and sister, and my dad noted that you may not know you can click on the pictures on the side of the blog. So just in case you managed to make it to this blog but have found yourself technologically challenged, click on the pictures and you will see more fun pictures of my life. speaking of which, I actually just updated it and put up a few more pics of the training center for all to see. enjoy them! I will also have some pictures for you all in a couple weeks of my homestay family. And potentially a video if I can ever get enough bandwidth to upload it. That may involve and early morning wakeup to get on the internet when nobody else is competing for bandwidth, we'll see.I sort of meant to write a longer, more reflective blog entry tonight, but I'm all blogged out for the moment, so I'll start writing in my own journal a bunch of thoughts over the next two weeks while I'm gone at homestay and write you a long reflective entry when I get back, how does that sound?K good I'm glad you all agree.Alright well have a good 2 weeks for those of you who actually follow this (apparently more than I thought, according to Bec) and I will be back with fun stories, pictures and soon to be announced permanent site after homestay, part deux.Love you all, world.Emily

Hello All! I apologize in advance for the length of this entry. A lot has happened. Happy reading, inshallah. I am back from my first week at homestay, and I am alive and well. I will do my best to cover the bases, but it's a bit overwhelming. Also, don't hate me- I don't have pictures of it yet. I felt that getting there, not speaking the language and being completely lost, then just pulling out my camera and starting to snap pictures of everyone without being able to explain myself might not be such a good idea. So be sure that I will be taking pictures when I go back and will have fun things to share with all of you. The first night there was.... interesting. Ok it sucked. But it sucks for everyone. My language class consists of me and three other people, and they loaded us and our LCF (language and culture instructor) and all our stuff into a sept place- which is basically just a semi-broken down station wagon that works as the main source of public transportation in Senegal- and drove the half hour to Ker Madaro. I was dropped off first. I am actually living with the chief of the village and his family, which consists of about 25 loud, spirited Africans who were all excited to see me. They pulled up the house, where my welcoming party was waiting, and then said goodbye and they will see me at 9am the next morning. I was led around to see the bathroom, a very lovely squat toilet and separate stall for bucket baths, and my room. The room is just a plain cement walled room with a bed in it and a window. I have a key to it, though the lock is pretty fidgety, and I put my stuff down and was led over to a cement foyer where I was offered a chair, and all 20 or so kids sat down on a mat in front of me staring up at me as if I was a teacher and they were my new class. I think they were expecting a speech or something, not realizing that I spoke little more than “How are you? I am fine” and how to tell them my name. They promptly named me Fatuu after my mother in the village and went around the room telling me all of their names. Clearly confused, they suggested I write them down by writing on an invisible piece of paper in the air, so I went to go grab my notebook, and it stayed by my side almost every minute the entire week afterwards. Most of the rest of the night followed suit. I walked around following people and not able to say anything to anybody or have any idea what was going on. We have electricity there, so we watched tv for a little while at one point, and flipped back and forth between French and Wolof channels while 15 kids sat on the floor around the bed and I sat there while my brother pointed to things in the room or body parts and named them while I wrote them down in the notebook. Water in the compound is taken from a hose that they use to fill one of 2 large drums that they have with some old tin coffee cans in them that are used for filling kettles, buckets for bucket baths or just drinking out of. I awkwardly set up and filled my water filter from it and moved it into my room where people wouldn’t stare at me for using this strange plastic contraption to drink. Dinner was about as typical Senegalese as it gets- we sat on the ground (I actually had a small 6-inch high bamboo stool because I am an honored guest) around the communal bowl while eating the national dish-ceebujen- with our hands. Yes, they did use soap and water to wash up first. No, that doesn’t really make it less awkward the first time around. We sat around on the mats outside the house for a little while, and soon afterwards, I tried to signal that I was tired and just went back to my room. It is extremely hot because there is really no good ventilation in my room, but I was so tired that I pretty much just passed out after a quick “what the hell did I get myself into” to Tim. I later found out that everyone in the stage had the same or relatively similar experience as me. It comes with the whole Peace Corps package. That’s not to say the whole week went that way. The next day, I was awkwardly told to grab my notebook and led to my LCFs homestay at 8 the next morning, where I found Lisa, another woman in the group, sitting and struggling to figure out what was going on as well. We discussed how we both ate the strange rice and smoked fish dish that is the lifeblood of most Senegalese and were told led to class at 8 am. Spencer and Peter, the other two people in the group, arrived, as well as Aissatu, my LCF, and we pretty much just stared blankly at each other as we tried to figure out what had just happened. After a debrief, we had a chance to discuss our experiences and figure out good ways to deal with it some more. We had language class sitting under a mango tree in the yard, and went back to our homes for lunch and rest time at 1. The second day wasn’t a hell of a lot easier, but it’s amazing how much you can start to bond with someone with just using facial expressions and laughing about stupid stuff. Nabuu, one teenage girl, helped me immensely by showing me what I need to do and helping me with language practice over time. The little kids are all super willing to help, but have no concept of speaking slowly or what it is like to speak to someone and have them not understand you. Bucket baths aren’t all that bad either. They consist of a bucket of water and a smaller bucket that you use to scoop up the water and pour it over yourself, then try to lather up and rinse off as best you can. When you’ve been sitting around and sweating all day, any sort of cool water is much appreciated. It’s no shower, but you feel somewhat clean afterwards for about 10 minutes or so until you start sweating again and go sit on the ground. The next few days were better. I started to learn a bit of a schedule, and I figured out that to get away from the ceebujen, you can go to a boutique and buy some small, chocolate filled cookies and pineapple juice. They also have mangoes there, since it is primarily a farming village. Believe it or not, I actually started to learn the language a little bit. I certainly do not speak it by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s amazing how you can hear a word a couple of times and eventually start to pick it out in a conversation. Wolof is completely different than anything you’ve ever heard too. As I was writing this blog entry, I told Brendan back home that “wolof is weird- like it has the article at the end of a word rather than the beginning, doesn't have verb conjugations but has pronoun conjugations depending on the context, and conjugations of pronouns to make things negative too. and the written language is a combination between french accents, english characters and phonetic symbols.” Also, my mom at site had a baby yesterday! She was born yesterday at about 6 am, and I saw her when I came home from class for the morning when she was only a few hours old. I have never seen a baby that young before. This also means that I will be attending the baptism coming up, which occurs 8 days after the birth. It’ll be fun. That seems to sum it up to me. Missing probably tons of other unimportant-but-probably-still-interesting details, that brings me to today. It is AMAZING coming back to some semblance of American civilization that is known as the Peace Corps training center. We have salad, and showers, and toilets… the things one takes for granted. Today was fantastic- we got to speak English, walk around the market in Thies, and I did laundry and now have tons of clean clothes which smell lovely. I did take more pics of the training center today- I’ll try to post those tomorrow. In the market, I finally got my adapter!! And I bought fabric and had a tailor make me a pagne, which is an African ankle-length wrap skirt that I will wear to the baptism. I was pretty proud of myself that after a week at homestay, I was able to have small, basic conversations with people in the market. I certainly am nowhere near fluent and can’t get much past the basic greetings, but a few key words go a long way. It does a lot for your confidence doing something like conducting a transaction in a language you only learned that you needed to know a week ago. Right now this is getting long so I will probably just leave it be for a little while. Stay tuned for another quick update and some pictures before I go back on Wednesday for a 2 week stay back there. Don’t forget to text me!! (free from google.) Love all of you, Emily