The price of living in a village with no electricity and having a tablet without the ability to use an internet key is that updating the fact that I am alive is very difficult. I am entirely dependent on the Kolda house for internet, which isn't the best idea because the internet here is very finicky. For example, right now I am using another volunteer's computer because my tablet for some reason won't go online and the physical desktop computer that is plugged in to the router won't go online either. So a big thanks to Lisa for letting me steal her computer for a while so I can update my friends and family on life in my village beyond facebook photos and quick status updates.
I've been trying to figure out how I would put this blog together for the last couple weeks. So much has happened in the last two months - physically, emotionally - that it is hard to really relay everything, nor do I think it is possible to actually do that. So I'll get as much across here that I can, and the rest will have to stay in the pages of my journal and the little black book I carry around in village to write down words I don't know and observations.
My plan is to write two posts: one for my personal experiences and feelings, the other for cultural/village observations. Please forgive me for leaving things out, or even glossing over details as the first five weeks of my village life are a bit of a blur of unbearable heat, tons of frustration, lots of confusion and homesickness.
And it was two months ago, so escuse my poor memory as well.
So here goes.
I arrived in Badion in the afternoon of May 23rd, got out of the air conditioned truck and wanted to pass out from the heat. The hottest part of the year here is April thru Mid June. So I arrived right in the middle of crazy heat and had to unpack everything. That whole day was a bit of a blur. It is strange to think back on it. I didn't know anyone, could hardly speak the language (which still holds true today) and I was extremely self conscious. It didn't help that my family only knew that I was coming about two hours before I arrived, that particular fact made me very upset because the week before my counterpart had called me on the day I was originally supposed to install and asked why I didn't show up. I called the man responsible for informing our families and he swore he told my family. Obviously not. So this time I called the same man two days before I installed and asked if they told my family when I was installing. He said yes. So I thought everything was a-okay.
Obviously not.
My APCD, the man in charge of the Health sector of volunteers, called me on the way to my village and said he couldn't get ahold of my counterparts or family. So I had to find the number of the middle school principle from my village and ask him to inform my family (he speaks very good English, which is how I managed it).
So, with two hours notice, I didn't get the same kind of big fanfare that most other volunteers got upon their arrival. For my own personal preferences, I am glad of it because I felt uncomfortable and awkward enough as it was. The women kept asking me to dance (and their kind of dancing is not at all like Western and I can't dance anyway) so I resisted, telling them I couldn't dance, but at last I relented and just did this spinning thing in the middle of the circle. They all laughed and now they know for sure that I can't dance. So now when they asked me to dance, it is far more of a joke and they don't expect me to dance. Thank God.
That first night I was visited by giant spiders and an army of black ants crawled up my walls the next day. Freaked me out and I ended up running to my host dad, Mamadou, who is the chief, and asking for help. He just used my broom to sweep them off the walls and stuck a rock in the whole to their empire. Always a good experience.
Insects are the bane of my existence right now, but that is jumping ahead a little so I'll hold off for the moment.
Chickens, roosters, donkeys, cows, sheep and goats wake me up each morning. I know when most people think of Africa and its animals, they think of lions and hyenas, zebras and giraffes, but they don't exist here. Senegal, really, is one giant farm. There are monkeys, but it isn't like they are hanging from every tree. All the wildlife is in fact domesticated or just birds. So sorry folks, no pictures of lions on the prowl.
Also during those first few days random people would come into my room and just look around. Really awkward and very uncomfortable, but that is just part of their culture. Privacy and private property really doesn't exist - at least among family or friends - so it has been really difficult to set boundaries to my hut and get people to respect those boundaries. It also didn't help that in the beginning I didn't have a curtain across my door, so everyone could see in all the time. That was remedied after the first market day - Sunday - where my dad helped me get a hammer, nails, curtain and he bought meat (which was not a pleasant sight) for lunch that day.
A scorpion crawled through my room the second night and my neighbor, the elementary school principle, helped me kill it.
To escape the onslaught of children and people the first couple days I just escaped to a Mango tree behind my hut and brought my Pulaar flash cards with me. I ended up building some credit with the kids by doing that actually, because I could pick mangoes and throw them down. Ended up spending the first week following the kids when they asked me to come so I could climb into the trees they couldn't get into. I'll tell you right now there is nothing compared to picking a mango and then eating it right there in the tree.
I know I'll miss the mangoes when I do get home. The season is over - or very nearly - and I already miss them.
The kids taught me some of their games, including a variation on Jacks, hopscotch and a game that is played in the dirt with rocks that reminds me a bit like checkers. I'll talk a bit more about these games in terms of the culture in a second post, but it was a bit disturbing to find that there is no strategy or tactics in these games. It is all about scoring. Nothing else.
Language was the foundation of every frustration, coupled with the heat, is just made for some extremely hard first weeks. My community counterpart was in the Gambia for the first 7 weeks of my service, so instead of having a guide to the village, I wandered around from compound to compound on my own and greeted people, wrote down words that I didn't know and endured the constant, ceaseless comparisons of my language skills to Chelsea's (she's the volunteer at my road town and the volunteer who has spent the most time in my village as they were preparing for me to come). They laughed at me, found out a few of them were calling me an idiot - there is a boutique owner who knows some English and he helps me with things I don't know - and my self esteem, already low from having failed my Pulaar test - took blow after blow.
As I look back at it now I honestly don't know how I managed to survive five solid weeks in village. The kids in my family are nuts, and there are two that I absolutely hate.
I was never a very 'kid friendly' person in terms of wanting to have my own or be a babysitter and such. I just don't have patience for it. This country has transformed that impatience to really just despising children. I know full well that the circumstances of their lives - including having 3 moms and that there are 14 of them in one family - makes everything completely different, but in some ways I feel like this setting for child raising just brings out the worst aspects of children to the nth degree. They don't really get to be kids - as they work in the fields or are doing dishes or taking care of their younger siblings, depending on their gender - and they aren't really parented because their mothers are so busy cooking, pounding grain, and doing so many other things. They are left to their own devices from a very early age and responsible behavior and discipline is not taught. Punishment is having the crap beat out of them. So kids are brutal to each other, sneaky in their transgressions against each other so they don't get beat and free to indulge in their cruelest vices.
After telling my family over and over again that I couldn't eat fish or palm oil and them ignoring it, I ended up getting very sick for three days. Only after that miserable experience did they finally believe me when I said I can't eat certain items, and I added this rice porridge that they eat for breakfast and occasional dinner. The porridge with peanuts was also added to the list along with the drive version of the latter. No idea if those things really made me sick, but it was what I was throwing up for 3 days until it was nothing but oil coming up my throat. So I don't eat those things and I haven't been sick since.
More heat, language problems and bad phone reception filled those five weeks, though I got far more comfortable in Badion, got to know people and my language did improve a bit. I am still woefully dismal at it, but at this point I've decided that I don't really care. There are enough things that cause stress that if I continue to bluster and worry over my language skills I'll go insane. At this point, it is what it is and if I end up - at the end of 2 years - being the worst Pulaar speaker in the history of Peace Corps Senegal and I'm not going to care. My replacement can be amazing at it. Right now I just figure my job is to teach my village what it is like to have a white person in the village, what their language sounds like coming from a westerner and that not all Americans are rolling in dough.
That helped with my self esteem and I relaxed at bit more and just kind of went with the flow. I still get irked when people criticize my language or say I am not as good as Chelsea. Sometimes it hits me so hard I just have to get up and leave. I don't care if it is rude, I just can't let them think they can say those things without some kind of reaction. Leaving is the best method, because then they know they have actually given offence.
Another form of stress relief has been watching the thunderstorms. Those started around mid June, though it didn't actually rain in Badion until the 19th. There really isn't anything like the sound of rain that reminds me more of being home or helps to settle my nerves. It cools down the air and gives me an excuse to stay in my hut. Everyone else does too, so I don't have to feel guilty about it.
Around this time was when I first met with the womens groups. 53 Pulaar women, nearly all of them type A personalities, trying to talk over each other. It was intimidating as hell and really overwhelming. Found out that they don't want just a garden, they want to do some serious crops and a cashew tree nursery. Not my expertise. They were also disappointed when I told them I would not be bringing 'Toubakou' medicine, to which one lady responded, 'then what good are you for us?'
Always nice.
Phone calls from home have really sustained me through the last two months. As well as my new kitten. As this post is always turning into a novel I'll try to truncate the story.
Dauda, one of the Peace Corps officials, came to my village after the 4th of July - where I went to Kedougou as my celebration for successfully making it through the 5 week challenge - as part of a first year torney of visiting the new volunteers to see how things are going. My host father had promised from the beginning that I could have a dog. "There is no problem," he told me. He even told me of villages he knew of that had some pregnant dogs. So what happens? Dauda comes and he, my host dad and my one health post counterpart, Aliou, have a discussion - in Wolof, which I don't understand - and out comes that I cannot in fact have a dog because it would be inappropriate for my dad. Or something to that affect. Big problem with having host nationals come do the visits is that they really aren't very good English speakers so a ton, a ton, is lost in translation. For 7 weeks I thought I could have a dog. Now, let me make this clear, I did not come to my village or to Senegal with the intention of having a dog. I just know a lot of volunteers who have a dog and the companionship is invaluable. My thought was, if it was okay with my family, I would get a dog. So my host dad, at volunteer visit back in April, said it was okay to have a dog. So I started planning for it.
Then to find out I could not have one after being told I could was extremely frustrating. I was disappointed. And when I asked why he didn't tell me before, the answer was that in the Senegalese culture you don't deny things to guests. So they just let me think I could have one. I can't help but wonder what would have happened if I had come back to Badion one day with a puppy. Would he have said 'no'? Or just continued on the same 'guest' route and said it was okay. I didn't come here wanting to offend anyone or doing things that were culturally inappropriate. My friend Julia, who is the closest volunteer to me, had three puppies reserved for herself, me and another volunteer. Within a week of that conversation with Dauda, I would have had a dog.
Sufficed to say, I told Dauda that he had to tell my dad that this sort of 'guest' mentality had to stop. If I ask to do something, or want to have something, he had to be direct and tell me yes or no directly. Apparently he agreed, but we'll see how it goes. Because when I hear 'yes' I assume that is exactly what it means.
So I have this cat. I mentioned once to my sister, Kumba (who is 15, or so she thinks, as age really isn't kept track of here), that a cat would be useful for the mouse who scurries around my room at night. The next thing I know, I get back from Kedougou and my younger siblings say "your cat is at a compound near the lumo. When do you want to get it?"
Her name is Tennan (which means Monday in Pulaar, and is also the name of one of my host mothers), and she's earned her keep by killing a mouse fairly early on in her stay. Not to say she hasn't been difficult or that haven't asked myself why I ever said anything in the first place, but at the moment I wouldn't trade her playful cuteness for anything. I love how she'll crawl up onto my bed and fall asleep on my stomach. I've never been a cat person before, but when it comes to companionship over here, I'll take anything. And she killed a mouse, so it isn't like she isn't useful.
I guess I've been a bit negative so far, so let me try and round out this post with some positive:
- My dad and I have a really great relationship. He's protective, kind, loving towards his kids (though harsh when he catches them doing things wrong) and he and I have become fairly good friends. He gets really upset when people call me 'Toubako' and when the Euro cup was going on we'd sit together and listen and I would tell him if someone scored (the radio transmission came from the Gambia and was thus in English)
-Jarta, the Elementary school principle, is one of my best friends in my village. He is so nice, so helpful (he built my bed and helped me put up my mosquito net and tarp above my bed), and always has a great attitude and always has a smile for me to cheer me up. He also has bought me like a million mangoes, alway appreciated.
-My Siblings: despite the fact that two of them are hellions, I really do like most of them and it's great when I come back from Kolda or when I came back from Kedougou and I was gone for a week, they always run up and shout, "Aisatou Arti" (Aisatou came back!). Had some great moments of me falling in the mud or them trying to speak English. They always want me to play games with them and love it when I chase them accross the compound.
-Hawa Sen - a woman who lives in a hut nearby. She makes breakfast sandwhiches and she's really become another one of my friends. Her son, Saliu, is a pudgy bundle of squirming cuteness that has only just started to walk. I love playing with him and she occasionally gives me free coffee or a sandwhich (which is either butter or bean. Don't get confused, there really aren't any sandwhiches that we think of them. It is a baggett with beans or mayo or butter or chocolate sauce)
-My American Family - I can tell you right now that I don't think I would still be here if it weren't for all of my family that has supported me through cards, letters, pictures and packages. I can't even begin to properly thank all of them for everything.
My days in village are pretty humdrum. The work hasn't really started yet as the first three months are really just for learning the language and the village, so there isn't a lot to report on that end. Made a garden, that may or may not survive since all the seeds came from America and the bugs here are pretty intense. Termites are horrible, ants are relentless and with the rainy season flies and mosquitos are horrible. I am a moveable feast for mosquitoes and fire ants. My legs are in fact currently wrapped up in guaze and ace bandage to try and heal the sores (because I scratch) and protect from further bites.
Ramadan began 2 weeks ago and that always proves a challenge. I'll go over it in more detail in the other post, but it is a very tense month of no eating or drinking water from sunup to sundown. In this heat, while everyone still works in the fields, I can't believe the health post isn't overrun by heat stroke victims. It is tough on those who sell food for a living and it just sort of depresses the whole atmosphere because people get very cranky - understandably so - and their tempers are short. I am not fasting and loving all the food that was sent to me in the packages I have received. It helps me a ton and I feel no guilt in not fasting. Though I was told by three separate women that I should fast because I'm fat.
I've lost nearly 20 lbs while being here. I'm far from fat, thank you very much.
IST - in service training - starts August 23rd, so I'll be back in Thies for a week and a half. Going to raid the Bon Marche of cereal, ice cream and other luxeries. Already planning a pizza dinner with other friends.
I know I've missed a lot, hopefully I can remedy it in future posts, but I'll leave this novel how it is. I do appologize for how all over the place it is.
Cheers for now,
Christine
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