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