Water For Sing Thiang Poullo

I received news a few days ago that my grant request for a well project in another village has been approved. I've referred to a well grant in the last few posts with little detail, so today I'm going to start from the beginning and tell you all a story of how this project even came to be.

Laundry and water gathering at the one well in Sing Thiang Poullo

Sing Thiang Poullo (pronounced Seen--Chang--Poolo) is a remote village approximately 25km (about 15 miles) northwest of my village, Badion. I'd been there before when I accompanied my counterpart on a meningitis vaccination tourney. I remember thinking to myself how lucky I was to be in Badion - 'the big city' - with easy access to the main road and a market every day.

A man I really only knew in passing, Kebou Camara, came to talk to me about a friend of his in this village and their water problems. At this time particular time, just after my birthday, The Appropriate Projects grant for my school well had just been approved and I was in the middle of trying to understand why there were delays in starting the actual work (government interference is sooo annoying sometimes).

"The chief found out about you giving a well to the middle school," said Kebou, "and he wants to meet with you about getting a well in his village." I asked him to explain a bit more, as I can't just go around promising wells for people who don't really need it, nor can I help finance private wells (such as those found in individual family compounds); it has to be a real, community wide need. So he invited me to his house to sit down and discuss the issue and of course to make some tea.

"There is no water over there," he began, dumping a packet of tea leaves into the small green tea pot. "They have only one well - one! - for their entire village." That snatched my attention.

"How many people are in the village?" I asked him. He shook his head slight and frowned. "I'm not sure," he replied, fanning the coals. "300 I think. Maybe more but that isn't the whole problem." Not the whole problem? I thought as he dumped a ton of sugar into the now boiling tea. 300 people and one well is a large problem already. "The well is far from the houses and all of the animals come to drink there."

Now that's a problem.

Sipping the first round of the strong, extremely sugary tea, he told me that the water table was between 30 and 35 meters (98-115 feet) and two other wells had long since dried up/collapsed because of 'stupid men who stole the village's money and told them to dig in the wrong spot'. So water was very hard to come by, especially during the dry/hot season from March to July.

I told Kebou it might be possible to do something about it, but I first wanted to meet with the village chief and see for myself. He agreed and a week later I went out to the village. I didn't have any of the forms, or have much of a clue as to what kind of grant I would need  - as that all depended on cost - but I was armed with a pen, a small notebook and some basic knowledge of needs and requirements.

A view into the village

There I met with the chief's son who is pretty much chief in all but name. Moussa Soh is around 40 years old, tall and extremely skinny. He toured me around the village, showing me the one good well where a bunch of women were pulling water, the two dead wells and introduced me to the co-leaders of the women's group. Over 330 people live in this village. They own, collectively, over 200 cattle, 40 horses, 60 donkeys and a ton of sheep and goats. All of them must have water. They all get it at one place (see the top picture).

Because of the distance of the well to the houses, women do all their laundry right at the well. Contamination from animals, the soap and bleach chemicals is prevalent. It seeps into the water table and is carried in their water storage containers.

Since women and girls are the primary water gatherers, a lot of time is spent waiting for their turn at the pulley, carrying benoirs and buckets back and forth. Time they could spend doing other things like cooking meals, looking after their kids, or taking a well deserved break under a shady tree.

Teenager on the way to the well to water his father's horse

We settled down outside Moussa's hut, tea already boiling away and talked about what he wanted, what I could provide and where we could meet in the middle in order to make this whole thing feasible. Since I didn't know the exact details of the requirements, I explained that any grant I could give would require a contribution from the community. They would have to pay for part of it, in cash and goods. A little surprised - as people are so used to just being handed everything without having to pay any part of it - he agreed.

I told him I'd get all the paperwork when I came back from my sisters's wedding and return to fill in all the information. His job, until I returned, was to find out the cost of everything: materials, what the well diggers would charge, supplies, etc. Grants take forever to get approved and because of the large expense of this project (2 wells at 35 meters and fully lined is not cheap) I knew the type of grant was going to be way more complex than the Appropriate Projects grant for the school. So the sooner submitted for approval the sooner we could start searching for financing. That was another surprise, but Moussa said he would do his part and wished me a peaceful trip back to America and his father gave a blessing for my sister's marriage.

One of the dead wells.

Water is there, if that tree growing out the side is any indication.
This is the well we're going to rehabilitate.

I flew back into Dakar in mid-May, talked to my supervisor about the proposed project and he told be because of the expense of the wells, I'd need a Peace Corps Partnership grant. The paperwork is a pain in the butt to fill out, and requires a lot of information - minute details that I didn't think to talk to Moussa about when I first visited. And the community contribution was much larger than I thought. 10% of the entire cost of the project has to be cash.

Cash.

Something this small farming community didn't have in droves.

Another 15% had to be 'in kind'. Food, lodging, labor, materials, etc. That part was easy to do. Hard part was going back to that village, finding out how much it was going to cost and then tell them that 10% had to be in cash.

As with everything in Senegal, I did not immediately go out to the village upon return to Badion. I had to wait for Kebou to arrange a time. There is no phone reception in Sing Thiang Poullo, so you have to send messages with others that are going there or hope to run into Moussa when he occasionally comes to Badion. But a day was finally set in June and Kebou and I met with the men and women who were concerned with the whole project.

The project leaders in Sing Thiang Poullo. Kebou is on the extreme left trying to stay out of the picture.
The chief (in blue on the left) and his son Moussa (in green to the right) gave me a chicken in thanks for helping them.

Four hours of discussion and figuring out percentages went on while men smoked, ate Kola nuts (a large nut the size of a walnut, bitter and chalk full of caffeine) and made tea. I asked them every question I could think of to fill in all the little boxes on the excel spreadsheet I had sitting on my lap. When we had finally filled in the boxes, and before I left, I explained to the group that if, during construction, more money was needed, I would not be able to ask for more. "What we ask for, we get and no more," I said. "You will have to pay any extra."

That brought on a few price changes on transportation costs and materials.

End result:

We will dig one new well and repair another well (see picture above), which will result in a fairly even distribution of water access through the village. The total cost is just a hair over $2000. $1760 needs to be graciously donated. The rest Sing Thiang Poullo is providing.

Since then I have gone back and forth with the Peace Corps office in Dakar, making changes, clarifications and adjustments to the request until at last I received a text from our grant coordinator saying that my request had been approved and posted on the Peace Corps site.

Best news ever.

The next day Moussa came by to greet me and check up on the grant and I was so excited to be able to tell him that Peace Corps had accepted his request and now we could raise money.

"Thanks be to Allah," he said with a large smile.

"Not done yet," I told him. "We still don't have the money."

He just smiled and said, "It will come if Allah wills it."

I'd like to add one more thing to this story and that is to point out its relative uniqueness. This community came to me and asked for help. Not to build them a road, or bring electricity. They didn't ask for a new school or a water tower. They asked for helped to dig some wells. A feasible project within both our means. This doesn't happen very often. They didn't balk at contributing to its success. Didn't complain or ask why I wasn't just giving it all to them like 'other Toubakos' [foreigners/whites]. They want and needs these wells so much they are willing to sell an animal if their cash reserves are low.

I can't even begin to explain how much of a big deal that is.

With just under 8 months left in my service, this is my last (and really first) big project. The time it will take get funding and dig will take me to January or February, at which time I will be attending my Close of Service conference, writing up reports and planning my flight home. The nature of this project, the true need of the community and the fact that they asked me for help makes me so anxious about making sure these wells get dug before I leave. I cannot pass this project on to anyone. And I cannot leave the country with an open grant. All things must be finished a month before we leave. No loose strings.

Which brings me to the point of this whole epic novel of a post: we need the funds.

If you would like to donate to this project, just follow this link: Sing Thiang Poullo Well Project and fill in the little white box on the right. Any amount helps. I and the wonderful people of Sing Thiang Poullo will be eternally in your debt.

My next post will be a return to normal programming. I've got three new kittens sleeping in a box by my bed, pictures of which I have in droves and will post to the brink of cuteness overload. That will come in two weeks or so as I'll be in Thies and Dakar for summit and my mid service medical exam. Gosh darn I'll have to suffer through pizza, ice cream, lots of wireless internet places, cheaper fruits and veggies and access to a grocery store.

Whatever shall I do?

Cheers!

Bugs and Movies

I've been trying to figure out how to best write this post and what to write about for the last month. Ramadan, rainy season, grant delays, GRE studying, a pregnant cat and one cat lost makes for a busy and yet utterly monotonous month. I've also started allowing movie viewing again, albeit with a much stricter hand. With the arrival of August - and now a mere 8 months to go - my thoughts have also be much occupied by the great question of what will happen after the Peace Corps.

Extremely premature, I know. But since I am taking my GREs in November my brain fast forwards to the reasons for taking the exam in the first place and the next thing you know I'm researching schools and setting up an excel spreadsheet on costs, GPA, median GRE scores, LSAT scores (because, yes, I'm seriously thinking of going to law school), etc. My brain goes into hyper-anxious mode and I'm already stressing over an exam that I won't take for 10 months and if I'll get into one of the 14 schools I am interested in.

I know: I'm utterly nuts.

So let's talk about what this blog is supposed to be about: Peace Corps Service and village life.

Update from my previous posts:

ALL MONEY COLLECTED FOR GIRLS' SCHOLARSHIP!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

So my girls will now be going to school for another year and I can't wait to be able to tell them and their families. I will receive the scholarship money in September and we'll do some kind of ceremony to acknowledge the girls' achievements and the reasons for their scholarship. Hopefully this kind of recognition will motivate other girls to get their grades up and work hard. In addition, perhaps it will give the parents - arguably the most important factor in this whole thing - a more tangible result of all that studying and the hours spent at school. And maybe give them a reason to encourage continued study rather than begrudge it.

Will certainly post details and pictures of that event when it happens.

On a less happy note, my cat, Talata, never returned. It is now two months since I last saw his fluffy tail disappear into the night and I have long since given up any hope of him returning. I was distraught for a while, seeing Talata in every cat that had a smudge of black on its back, hearing his call with every sound that remotely resembled a cat's and expected his mischievous self to hop down from my bed when I entered my hut.

No such luck.

I tell myself that in the terror and confusion of a storm he wandered into a compound in a nearby village where a family took a liking to him and he's found a new bed to sleep on.

My other cat, Tennan, missed him terribly at first and took on a far more clingy and affectionate behavior after his vanishing act. Or that could possibly be because she is pregnant (and now no more than a week from giving birth) and her hormones are going nuts-o, making her super affectionate and clingy. I'll take a mixture of both in order to believe that she won't go back to the standoffish-independent cat she was before Talata left once her kittens are born.

Baby kitten pictures will follow, so stay tuned.

The rainy season is in full swing. Starting earlier in June than last year, the rains gradually increased from a smattering of once a week to a couple times a week to now nearly every other day. Reading through my journal from last year shows that August is the main month for rain (or at least it was last year), goes through September and then peters out by early to mid October. While I am enjoying the cooler, occasional totally overcast days, rain and greenery, the end cannot come soon enough. And for just one reason:

BUGS.

I am a walking buffet for all bugs that bite and probably for a few that just enjoy stinging innocent bi-pedals for fun. Ants, mosquitoes, spiders,  evil looking centipede things, and all manner of unidentified flying things like to take a bite of any exposed skin. I scratch - OF COURSE - so I've got all these lovely scabs on my legs and a couple on my arms which leads so many people in my village to ask why I don't used a mosquito net at night. Laughable, really, since I ALWAYS sleep under my net and they do perhaps a grand total of two weeks out of the entire year. They don't believe that mosquitoes are out all day long  - not even when I kill one in front of their eyes at 830am. "That one is just not normal," they tell me as I wipe the bug corps from my hand, often times accompanied by a couple drops of the blood the damn thing managed to suck out before I sent it to hell.

Saturated with information about malaria carrying mosquitoes, which DO in fact only come out at night and return to their god forsaken homes after the sun rises, the people in my area don't seem to know/understand that a bunch of different kinds of mosquitoes exist and that one or more are out hunting for tasty blood 24 hours and day, 7 days a week, with no holidays or vacation taken off. Even in the dead center of cold season - late December to early January - there are mosquitoes buzzing around. They just aren't as prevalent. I've tried teaching/talking about it to them, but they just shake their head and tell me that mosquitoes just like white people's blood more than black people's.

They have no idea of the influx of malaria patients at my Health Post.

Flies are another HUGE problem. I don't know what it is about rainy season - or even if the season has anything to do with it - but the flies are horrendous. They were last year as well, as my old journal reminds me. Humming incessantly in the background, landing on my food and body and face and hair and everything else that I just want to scream in disgust and irritation. What makes it worse is the fish my host family has been cooking these last few weeks.

Now, I can't eat the fish here. It makes me horribly sick. My family knows this - after a three day throw up session back in June last year - so they always wait to put the fish in the meal until after my bowl has been filled. I'm really glad for that because for the longest time they just didn't eat fish because of me and I felt horrible. This is the cheapest form of animal protein available to them and I hated that they didn't cook it because of me. Since Ramadan started - and I told my host moms I would take care of my own lunch - they've been having fishy concoctions for lunch.

And the remnants lie about ten feet from my hut.

I've never enjoyed the smell of raw fish. I tolerated it easily enough, but I was never about to go out and buy a Glade Plug-In that wafted the scent of raw cod through the house. Now, though, one whiff and I'm swallowing down bile. Worse than the smell: Flies and my cat bringing in the discarded guts and heads so she can munch and slurp and crunch in my room. These aren't your run of the mill house flies. These are much larger, shiny green flies that also haunt animal carcasses, latrines and the excrement of large animals.  They are loud. They are irrepressible and they invade my hut because of the close proximity to the tossed fish guts or follow the trail my cat leaves behind as she drags some of it into my hut.

I CAN'T STAND IT!

My journal that I kept last year has become a kind of road map to insect invasions. Frogs are already showing their annoying little faces in the large pools of collected rain water, a tease for the post rainy season plague that will come much too soon. According to myself a year ago, this overwhelming population of flies should vanish in the next week or so. But then again, my host moms did not throw fish guts ten feet from my hut last year. So I'm hoping they will heed my pleaded request for them to throw the fish guts in the other direction and save me from the urge to throw up when the wind blows through my windows. If not, I'll have to bury as much as I can as soon as I see them throwing the guts and hope they get the idea.

In the midst of GRE vocab flash cards, cat woes, scholarship stuff and insects, I've been trying to tweak my grant request for a well project to satisfy the requirements set down by Peace Corps. This weekend was spent in Kolda to get my bike repaired and to do the latest requested change. I'm hoping it is the last one and my next blog post can center around begging, pleading and perhaps throwing in a soupcon of guilting to collect money for some desperately needed wells. 330 people, 200+ cows...one well.

Not good.

Stay tuned for news on that point.

As I mentioned before, it is currently Ramadan - the month of fasting for Muslims all over the world. For thirty days, sun up to sun down, people do not eat or drink anything. Take a moment to think about that. No water. No food. From 530 am until 730 pm. It's Africa during the rainy, muggy, planting season. Ramadan doesn't put off going to the fields. It's still hot. There is still tons of work to do every day. Try it for one day. Or perhaps just a few hours. Your blood sugar drops and you get dehydrated. Grumpyness is a pathogen, infecting even the most docile person.

Ramadan is supposed to be a month spent in the mosque, praying and building your personal relationship with Allah, re-establishing faith, forgiving old wrongs and giving thanks for your family, friends and your life. But for subsistence farmers and others who much work every day in order to feed that family, the only thing Ramadan means is hunger, head aches, body aches, bad moods and spending a lot of money.

That latter aspect struck me as counter-intuitive last year. Expensive? But you aren't eating? The expense comes in the traditional meal before the fast begins each day and after it ends. Bread and coffee. A luxury most people here don't invest in more than perhaps once or twice a week, let alone twice a day. Not to mention Korite - the day of celebration marking the end of Ramadan - where new clothes and shoes are bought and tailored. A goat or ram is slaughtered, huge amounts of oily, seasoned riced are cooked and everyone gorges. The animal eaten - bought or taken from a family's own herd - is a huge expense. While rams in Dakar can go for over 200,000 CFA ($400), even the 25,000 CFA ($50) spent is a major cost - or loss of future revenue - for a rural family.

So, things aren't great during these 30 days. Saving grace is that it will be over on the 8th or 9th of this month. Fun fact about Ramadan: it follows the cycle of the moon, along the lunar Islamic calendar. Unlike Lent and Easter which occurs in roughly the same part of the year, Ramadan continually moves up 11 days every year. Next year Ramadan will start at the end of June. It will take just over 33 years for Ramadan to next land on these same dates. So during a certain period of time, Ramadan is during the more manageable cold season, where no planting or harvesting is done and the temperatures are far more tolerable. Other periods of time it lands in the worst possible time: April to May during extreme heat or October to November during the height of harvest.

My only regret at watching Ramadan end is the end of the fresh bread baked every evening by the three bread makers in my village. They only ever make bread during Ramadan; I can't even begin to explain why as demand for bread is year round. I've asked and they tell me they can't afford the flour when it isn't Ramadan. Demand is there. But the supply is not. I think there is an economics lesson there, but my micro-economics class was five years ago so I'm a bit rusty on the details.

The last thing I will mention in this epic post is the return of movie night.

I published a post just under a year ago about corporal punishment in this country and the utter lack of alternatives. Well, I found one: Taking away the thing they like/enjoy the most. In this case it was my tablet and movie showings.

For several months I showed a movie on my tablet in my compound every week (or close to it) for entertainment and for some fun conversations afterwards. After some initial zealous monitoring, I got comfortable and trusting of my siblings, letting them watch movies for the fourth or fifth time (I'm looking at you John Carter of Mars) while I sat somewhere else and read or hung out with my host moms. My rules were simple: one movie per night per week and DON'T TOUCH. My oldest brother quickly took over the responsibility of keeping the kids in line while watching the movie and after a while I allowed him to pause or skip ahead in the movie when the talking parts dragged out a little too long or dinner was ready.

I got too comfortable. One night I came back to the group to check on their progress and after a moment realized that the movie they were watching was not in fact the same movie I had started for them (which was Battleship, if anyone is curious. These aren't members of the Academy - action and movies where people have special powers are the only requirements for this audience). Startled, I asked who changed the movie (more of a rhetorical question as the only person who has any clue how to run my tablet is my oldest brother). Silence. These little buggers thought that I wouldn't notice the difference between a movie featuring Navy vs Aliens and a World War II movie.

So that was the end of movie night for about two months.

Two months of begging and pleading from my younger siblings; my oldest brother was alternately apologetic, insulted, confused and even possessive over my tablet and the incident. This irrepressible kid doesn't seem to realize that I was once 15 and lost privileges to things I liked as well. I know all the tactics. Standing behind someone, breathing down their neck after losing an argument over the use of that which is not yours does not actually reverse the decision. And unlike when I was 15 and did something to anger one of my parents, there is no appeal process to the other parent. The tablet is mine. There is no joint custody.

Sorry dude, I'm the supreme court of my own stuff.

Sentence: probation with a review in the unforeseen future. The result of which depending entirely on good behavior.

So two months later, after one of my other siblings asked me about Harry Potter and if I had those movies (he saw a friend with a Harry Potter t-shirt) I told them we could watch the movie on the following Saturday. Word spread very quickly. By the time we were ten minutes in I was surrounded by at least 20 people of varying ages.

I sat and watched it the whole time. Full of action and people with special powers, this genre is right up their alley and we've gone on to watch the second movie, which was even more fun to watch simply because of their reactions. Senegalese are deathly afraid of snakes for EVERY good reason. Give them a movie where there is a 60 foot snake chasing and biting at their beloved Harry Potter and you've got a potent recipe for screams and cheers that would make any movie producer smile.

The new rules are simple: we watch whenever the heck I feel like it and DON'T TOUCH. Touch, and it gets turned off. Complain that a movie YOU PICKED is bad and I turn it off. Bug and bother me about when we watch next and you wait longer.

Most of my siblings and even the neighbor kids have caught on and don't complain too much. My annoyingly persistent older brother, on the other hand, tried to negotiate terms with me strictly on frequency. He figured since it took a day to charge up my solar panel in order to charge my tablet after a viewing we could watch every three days (how nice of him to let me have the tablet all to myself for one night, right?). I take it all in good fun however, laughing at his form of logical reasoning (which included calculations of how many weeks I had left and the current bi-weekly viewing schedule, and that the next volunteer may not share his/her computer) to convince me to allow them to watch more movies. There was even a night about a week and a half ago where the subject of my non-too-imminent departure came up.

The dear wacko asked me if I would leave my tablet and movies behind so they could watch between my going home and the new volunteer arriving. At which time they would hand over my tablet and movies to be mailed back to me.

Bless him. I haven't laughed so hard in such a long time.

I've become a bit of a broken record on the subject of my replacement volunteer in so far as to say that they may not have an computer and even if they did, it is entirely up to them if they wish to share. I am making plans to write a letter to whomever takes up my hut in Badion with a list of probable stories they will be told of me to convince them to do things and the reality of my service. I won't tolerate my replacement having the wool pulled over their eyes or to feel obligated to share that which they would not feel comfortable sharing.

But again, that's 8 months away and I've got too much going on between times to get distracted.

So, kittens and Korite around the corner. Will post pictures. Our Health Summit is coming up in the beginning of September which requires a return trip to the Thies training center, where this whole adventure began 16 months ago. Can't believe it has already been that long.

Why does time seem to fly in hindsight?

Cheers!
Christine