The Last Huraah

Today is my last day in Senegal. For the last two years I have imagined, dreamed, planned or otherwise thought about this day. None of it was remotely near the reality. I recall picturing sheer joy, excitement, feelings of relief and perhaps fireworks celebrating the end of my service.

Well, okay, maybe not the fireworks.

The last week I've been in Dakar has been low key, nearly anticlimactic. There is a small group of us here at the Regional House that went through meetings and going from office to office getting our paperwork signed and property turned in. A mini final family reunion as we try to get through the last hurdles and while away the days before our final trip to the airport. It's been nice having the opportunity to spend time with those I didn't get to see much outside of training and summits. But then we have to say goodbye.

Which brings me back to the difference between what I pictured this day would be like and the reality.

It's hard.

The emotions from leaving village crop back up. Not at the same level, but it still isn't easy to say goodbye to this family that was chosen for us. Will we see each other again? When is the next time we will all sit around a table, a cold, cheep beer in our hands, telling tales of how we acted like bumbling fools in our village, or the latest awkward/creepy marriage proposal?

Don't get me wrong, I'm excited to go home. I'm looking forward to escaping the cloud of mosquitoes that lives here at the regional house, and the obnoxious taxi drivers who insist on charging three times the normal rate because my skin is white. I can't wait to see my family, to sleep in my own bed and have a bowl of raisin bran crunch for breakfast Tuesday morning.

But I have to say goodbye to another family in the mean time. There is too much goodbye in too short a time.

Today also marks two weeks since I left my village. I haven't been able to get a hold of my host dad - or anyone in my village for that matter - because the reception is so bad. I want to talk to them. To let them know I am leaving and that I miss them so much I can't even look at pictures of them without choking up a little. I pray to God that I'll be able to get through at least once - if not today - then once I'm home. 

I have two things to add which I forgot to post earlier: news on the Sing Thiang Poullo well to start.

They reached water in the new well! All that was left - at the time I visited them in the beginning of March - was to put the cement wall around the mouth of the well, which they have since finished and even wrote my name into it. Moussa came by on my last day for a political meeting and told me the first well was now completed and in use. "We wrote your name and Corps de la Paix in the cement so everyone will always know what you did for us." I tried to tell him that they did it for themselves - carried much of the burden in fact - but he just shook his head and said without the financing they never would have managed to get the two wells. The second of which the diggers had started work on. I'm assuming it isn't completed yet, but believe it will be soon.

So that's good news and I want to take this moment to thank each and every one of you who donated to this project. None of this would have been possible without your contributions. Thank you so, so much.

Second thing I want to add is just another story from village. Something to check off my bucket list. Or anti-bucket list as I should say.

I got stung by a scorpion.

The small, white little bastard was hiding between the metal sheet that is my back door and the wood frame. Stung my hand as I opened it to put my water buckets in my back yard for my shower. Took me a while to figure out what happened. I actually thought I'd burned myself on the aluminum of my door since the afternoon sun was blazing down on it and it does actually get hot enough to cook an egg (I've actually tested that theory). But when the feeling didn't abate and started moving down my hand I had to re-evaluate. Was it a spider or that horrible centipede like thing? No puncture marks. The pain increased, crawled further down my arm so I went back into my hut to see if there was anything to point me towards the culprit. Low and behold, there it was on the floor, just chillin' in the shade.

I admit that actually seeing the thing upped my freak out factor by about a hundred. Of all the possibilities that I'd come up with, a scorpion was nowhere on the list. I had no clue what to do. I didn't even know the word for scorpion in Pulaar since I'd never had the reason to say it and they aren't that prevalent in my village. I know it now - Yarrii - and I certainly won't be forgetting it any time soon. So I did what any other child would do: I killed it, then speared it on my knife to present to my family outside.

My host mom, Aisatou, stared at me, then it and then the way I was cradling my arm. The pain had reached my forearm and I could no longer move my pinky finger. "Did--did that sting you?" she asked. I just nodded, trying really hard to hold back my tears. This was a kind of pain I had never experienced before - and DO NOT EVER WANT TO AGAIN - and I was trying really hard not to let the pain mix with my fear and turn me into a blubbering mess. This was a bloody scorpion after all.

My family's actions totally helped on that point. There was no dismissal of the incident. Most of the time when someone gets stung or injured (in a minor way - blood or broken bones is a different story) the Senegalese just suck it up, get through it and then move on. No need to worry or take quick action. "You'll live." I distinctly remember being teased about fainting.

There was no laughter this time. My host mom brought me this salve to put on the sting, my host grandmother tied my bandana tight around my wrist and my sister, Mati, stayed with me in the health post as several other members of my family looked for a health worker to give me a shot. Quick, quiet efficiency. If they weren't terribly worried, then I shouldn't be either. After all, this sort of thing happens to them way more often than it does for us in Washington State. 

My sister left my side only after my host grandmother returned with the doctor and my host dad. My dad was nothing but sympathetic and my host grandmother stayed with me while I was getting the shot (holding me still at first because the first couple of injection hurt like bloody hell and I reflexively jerked). She just kept saying 'Sorry, sorry' over and over again. When it was done, my dad came in and tried to lighten the mood by telling me it was a good thing I hadn't already taken my shower because I had completely sweated through my tank top.

"You've never been stung by a scorpion before?" he asked me as we were leaving. "Welcome to Africa," he said with a smile after I shook my head.

I got nothing but sympathy for the next couple days as word got around the village. It's considered bad form for adults to cry here. Children cry, not adults. Except, it seems, in the case of scorpion stings. "Did you cry?" pretty much everyone asked me. "It's okay. That hurts sooo bad. You can cry. There's no shame in that." Good to know we all get a pass on the scorpion sting.

Whatever it was that was in the injection worked. Numb at first, after twenty minutes or so the pain did return, but far more tolerable and confined to my hand  - as opposed to clear down to my elbow. It was completely gone by the next afternoon.

So a scary few hours and a whole lot of street cred with my village all from a stupid scorpion two inches long. 

There it is. My last village story. Not a bad way to close out a blog.

I'll only add a very big Thank You to all those who have followed my Peace Corps service and helped me through the last two years. I am forever in your debt.

Cheers!

Christine

Saying Goodbye

Me and my best friend, Hawa, on my last day

"Whenever I think of my family, I will think of you. Whenever I think of Badion, I will think of you. You are my daughter and I pray that you have peace, success and happiness in your life. For you to have these things, is for me to have these things because we will always be family."

My host dad said that to me on Sunday morning after the two hour drive to Kolda from my village. After crying for an hour the night before, having said goodbye to my friends and siblings, then crying on the ride out of village very early in the morning, I thought perhaps I had got beyond it. Then he said these things and the only thing I could do to keep from becoming yet another puddle of tears was to hug him as hard and as long as I could.

Hugging isn't really done here. There are playful hugs, the 'side hug', but emotionally driven hugs? No. Especially between men and women. That just isn't done. It's even awkward with kids. It's such an American thing to do. But he didn't hesitate, he hugged me back just as tightly.

The last two weeks of being village were incredibly strange. Emotionally, that is. The days were the same. The routine, the food, the topics of conversation, all of that was the same. But under all the sameness was a kind of sadness. Especially with my closest friends and the teachers. The feeling of 'we don't have much more time together' pervaded every encounter and conversation.

On the flip side was that people didn't either believe I was really leaving or didn't understand that when I said I only had a month, or two weeks left, that was actually how much time I had left. At one week my host dad told my namesake host mom that we needed to figure out what we would do for my last day 'goodbye-thing' and she just stared at me like it was the first she'd heard of it. Time is extraordinarily flexible here. No one wears a watch and since most people cannot read French they don't know how to set the time and date on their cell phones. So while a meeting may start at 9am on paper, people will show up at 1030 or 11 (if at all) or show up the next day thinking that was they day of the meeting. Weeks and months are obscure. Time of the year is referenced by seasons (Mango, hot, rainy, cold) or big religious holidays (e.g. Korite, Tabaski). So things just kind of happen as they do,when they do and you just have to get used to it.

Or go crazy.

After two years, I'm way more laid back about timing and just seeing what the day brings. If I can do what I want to do when I want to, awesome. If not, *shrug*. Tomorrow is another day. But then things like COS dates come in and we are ripped back to the iron clad time schedules of the West. So when my host mom looked at me as though I'd grown a second head, I was both sympathetic and a bit irritated. She'd known this was coming. Calender or no calender, a month is still a month and a week is still a week. How is this a surprise?

She wanted to do a massive party with music and a goat to eat. I had absolutely no desire to do such a thing. Thankfully neither did my host dad, who immediately came to my rescue and put the kabosh on the whole idea. All I wanted was to have a lunch or dinner, my family and work partners, talk, drink tea and then say my goodbye before going to bed. I was leaving after all, and it wasn't going to be easy to say goodbye to the people I cared the most about in private, let alone in front of a giant audience. So it was agreed that we'd have a better than average lunch and dinner (cow meat for lunch, and chicken for dinner), invite people to come spend some time at the compound, talk, eat and drink sugary milk and tea before I went to bed. Then the next morning - early before anyone got up - someone would take me to Kolda.

That last week passed in a blaze of intense heat. The real Hot Season is just kicking into 2nd gear and I'm eternally grateful I won't have to face the real deal for a third time. February is like an oven on pre-heat, March on bake, April on broil and May all pretense is thrown out the door and we are all just submerged directly in a pile of coals.

Along with the heat was the awkward moments spent with my friends and family. People starting to come to terms with my departure and an endless barrage of people asking me for my stuff. Even towards the end, I felt that perhaps leaving wouldn't be too hard. Maybe, just maybe, I wouldn't get overly emotional. My siblings would be the hardest to leave, but the rest? I could handle it.

In true Senegalese style, nothing on Saturday worked out the way we'd planned/hoped it would. Three huge political meetings were happening on that day to prepare for the upcoming local elections. Two in my village and one in the Department capitol some 60km away. My host mother, Oumou, and her son, Jarta, went to the one in the capitol. I honestly thought I wouldn't see them again that day. Part of me was happy about that - Jarta is my absolute favorite sibling. He's mine. He calls me 'mom'. Having to say goodbye to that little bundle of wonderful was going to rip out my heart. I managed to put myself in a limbo like stage: maybe he'll be back in time, maybe not. I'll wait to emote about it later.

In the mean time, all the meetings kept people who said they would come for lunch from coming and it was a quiet, normal lunch time in the Mballo compound. The afternoon went on in its continuing heat. I took down my collage of photos, distributed my benoirs and buckets among my host moms and neighbors. Evening came and I helped cut up onions and pound pepper and garlic for the dinner. I bought one chicken, my host dad another. We almost never eat chicken - I've maybe had it 3, possibly 4 times, in the last two years - so this was a meal I looked forward to eating.

Chicken for Aisatou! Woo! Bring on the onions!

I packed more stuff, gave more things away, and spent time with my friend Hawa as my host mom's cooked the meal.

The meetings finally got over around 6pm, so all the women had to go to their own compounds to cook their families' dinner. Which meant that no one came for the dinner at our compound. My dad was very upset by this. While I was a bit disappointed, I also felt a bit relieved. Less pressure when I made my 'goodbye speech' and fewer people to potentially see me cry.

Oumou and Jarta did return early that day. Around 8pm they showed up and Jarta threw his little arms around my neck before starting to play with my braided hair. I couldn't let him go. I just wanted to hold him for the rest of the night, but since he had no idea that this night was different than any other, he eventually squirmed out of my grasp and played around the compound.

In the end my counterpart and a handful of women showed up for milk and tea and I read out my little pulaar speech that I had written (for which I had a TON of help from another 3rd year volunteer who was in my village the day before). Thank God it was dark because I choked up at the end and my eyes were burning by the time I was done. It wasn't particularly personal, as that isn't really culturally acceptable when in larger groups. These kinds of things are more about asking for forgiveness for wrongs done and forgiving others. Making sure the people of the village know that I was happy and that I am leaving without anger or bitterness and then giving a few traditional blessings (peace, prosperity, health, etc).

Near midnight I finally went to bed, but not before Jarta called out for me. "Neene!" (mom!) At one and a half, he's at that age where he likes to hand random things to people. In this case it was an empty can of condensed milk that we'd just finished drinking. All I could do was grab him up in a big hug, tell him I loved him and then quickly hide in my hut before I burst into tears.

Throughout the last two years, there have been many, many days where I wished that that day was my last one. I'd begged for the end of service to arrive faster. But when it did finally arrive, I didn't want it to be the last one. I knew it was going to be hard. I knew saying goodbye to people like Penda, Jarta, Oumou and my dad would be hard. I just didn't realize how deeply it would hurt.

I don't even know what time I finally fell asleep, but my alarm went off at 5 the next morning and I had to go through the last bits of packing before meeting my host dad outside to make the trip to Kolda. My cat, Tennan, who has single-handedly kept me sane for nearly two years, kept circling my legs and rubbing up against me. Could she sense that I wouldn't be coming back?

Let's just say she didn't help make leaving any easier.

There is one last cultural thing that should be noted: the left handed hand shake. Using the left hand is pretty much taboo here. You don't hand things over, or take thing with the left hand. You don't eat with the left hand or shake with the left hand. The left hand is used for...well, there's no toilette paper here so fill in the blank. Only when a person is leaving for a prolonged period of time do you shake with the left hand. It's like purposefully making a cultural mistake. The significance being that you must return to correct the mistake.

Sunday morning I woke up extra early in order to avoid seeing anyone and making my departure that much harder. This too is a cultural practice: leaving when no one is around to spare the final goodbyes and emotional displays. But my host moms, host grandmother and several siblings got up to say goodbye. After two years of not using my left hand to interact with other people, shaking their hands with my left hand felt incredibly strange. And wrong.

I was so grateful that it was dark out. I climbed on the back of my dad's motorcycle, tears already pouring down my face, and tried to focus on keeping myself as warm as possible in the very cold morning air as we zoomed out of the compound, past the health post, the school and down the dark dirt path out of my village.

My host dad and Jarta

Which brings me back to the beginning of this post. Saying goodbye to my host dad was especially tough. I already miss him and everyone else.

So now it is a week and a half or so until I get on the plane for America. In the mean time, I have time in Kolda to go through all of my things and then several days in Dakar to finalize all paperwork, grants and signatures so that I can actually leave. I'll try to make one last post before before I leave.

Cheers to all and a big thank you to everyone for all of the support in the last two years.

The End Is Near...

Nap time for Jarta

I apologize for the long delay between posts. It is amazing how quickly the last few months have slipped by. Thanksgiving, going home for Christmas, New Years, returning to Senegal and now it is practically the end of February. How do I fit the last few months into a single blog post? I'll try to cover the highlights and try not to wax ad nauseam about how excited I am to go home, the plans I've made and the list of a million things I'd love to have time to do all at once.

Let's talk about what is going on in my little village.

Bad news first:

As I previously wrote, we've been having trouble getting the well at the middle school started. The hammer came down the end of January. When I returned from [my totally awesome] trip home for Christmas, I got together with the principal and Babacar, the president of the parent-teacher organization. On the phone with the principal was the government official in charge of all the planning for the school. Our simple well - standard, cement lined, rope-pulley system - just wasn't modern enough for their modern school. They asked me to up my contribution to 3 million CFA ($6000) or transfer the money I already had to buy supplies for the school. Both impossible for different reasons, but impossible just the same.

On January 31st, the principal handed back the money. It was one of those rare moments of Pulaar clarity that I have enjoyed twice, possibly three times in my entire service. Returning the funds was not simple or quiet. Two teachers, two chiefs from nearby villages, Babacar, and three community leaders were all present. The entire process - from my first question about a well at the school to the very last conversation I had with Babacar before I left for Christmas - was explained. They also went over all the efforts they made to find well diggers, negotiate prices and the thousand-and-one ways we'd all bent over backwards to accommodate the many, many, changes the school officials made.

We shared the same frustration: we'd all worked towards this for nearly a year and a half; we all wanted this school to have water. What's more, once the school building was announced, we all wanted the well to already be in place so when the masons needed water to mix the cement so they wouldn't be pulling it from the community. Building this school has required - at its height - nearly 500 liters of water per day. The government didn't bring in a water truck. The water came from the wells already in place. Water needed to drink, cook, do laundry, and take baths.

You can imagine the frustration on that point.

They were disappointed. Angry on some points, but mostly disappointed. We were all a team in this effort and it was a hard crash, even if it did seem inevitable in the end.

After everything was explained, they told me the reason why they had so many people from other villages was to make sure that no one - no one - could ever say that the people of Badion 'ate money intended for the school'. They then counted out the money twice, handed it to me and told me to count it as well. I told them I didn't need to, that I saw and heard as they counted before, but they insisted I do. So let me say this: all $500 was returned.

To all those who donated to this project, I am deeply sorry. The only consolation I can give is that the money you gave will make its way to other Peace Corps projects.

Moving on to better news:

Progress on the well in Sing Thiang Poullo. Before I left for this long stint in Thies and Dakar, I visited Sing Thiang Poullo. The diggers were only four meters short of hitting water and they'd already begun dismantling the upper cement section on the second well, prepping it for repair. I am really looking forward to getting back to village and going out to see how far they've gone in the last three and a half weeks.

Going, going, going....25 meters is a long way

As for my trip to Dakar and Thies:

Close of Service conference (COS), All Volunteer conference, the West African Invitational Softball Tournament and final medical appointments took up nearly three full weeks. I can't believe it is finally the last few weeks of service. (7, to be exact, but who's counting? Right?...) I'm torn between asking how it could already be down to this last home stretch - literally the home stretch - and how it could have possibly taken so long for 2 years to go by. Everyone talks about the roller coaster of emotions during service, it isn't until the end that they mention how the very end looks like a richter scale recording.

I am so excited to go home. I'm ready to go home and move on to the next phase of my life. My belated birthday is pretty much planned. I know what I'm going to eat first. I'm going to spend a week and a half with my sister and brother-in-law down in California in May. I am over the moon, ready to have my cake and eat it to.

But the actual act of leaving my village terrifies me. Will I be a helpless puddle of tears? Will I be able to actually say goodbye to my brothers and sisters? My dad and moms? My best friend in village? My family and I haven't really talked about my leaving. We've joked about what I'll leave for them. My younger brother is getting my running shoes because his feet are the same size as mine. My multi-tool and knife will go to my dad. My sisters and host moms will have the pick of most of my clothing.

We have not discussed saying goodbye.

How do I say goodbye to a group of people that I genuinely love? Forever? It won't be the same as when I told my family in America 'goodbye'. It wasn't even really goodbye. Just, 'see you in two years.' I cannot make that promise to these people. My little brother, Jarta, who calls me 'mom', will not remember me. Nor will Alpha, or Saliou or any kid I've come to know and care about who are under the age of 5. It makes me sick to my stomach to even think about what I will say to them - or their mothers - on that very last day. "Take care of them, please, because I love them too."

My throat burns and my eyes are watering just thinking about it now.

I've screamed at them a couple times in the last 23 months. Wished to God that I was anywhere else and with anyone else. But they are and always will be my family. I love them, worry about them, and hope that every kid gets a chance to have a better life than just to live in Badion until they die. I want my sisters to go to highschool and college. My brother Adama is a genius with electronics and all things mechanical. Please, God, give him the means and the opportunity to study something like electrical engineering, or aeronautics or hydraulics. Wouldn't it be amazing if he put our little village on the map by inventing some awesome new device that could lift villages throughout Africa out of the dark with little more than wireless technology and well placed *insert name of awesome new invention*? This kid takes my dad's broken down radio and flashlight and makes his own working radio flashlight. Not exactly an iPod, but for a couple wires, string, well placed sticks and soddering via the heated handle of a spoon, he could put McGyver to shame.

The hardest step I have isn't the very last - getting on the plane in Dakar won't be difficult. The hardest step will come on or around March 30th, when I have to keep myself together long enough to put into words how I feel about the people in my village and say it to their faces.

You tell me, what would you say to this face on the last day, and not burst into tears in the process:

If you have an idea, let me know. Because I certainly don't have a clue.

Cheers,
Christine