15 Down, 10 To Go

It's been quite a while since I last posted.  Three months (shy a couple days) and a lot has happened in that time. Had my second birthday in country, my sister got married (which also had the added bonus of providing 3 days in Disneyland) and the rains have started with quite a bang.

Or perhaps I should say it has started with a hurricane.

Case in point:

This is the remains of the compound next to mine. See the roof on the ground?
That was the kitchen.

I don't remember the season being like this last year, but then again it would be incredibly naive for me to expect all seasons to be the same. But I hadn't expected the severity. Two storms with these kinds of results in a 72 hour period reeks havoc on a culture that has so little to work with and so little cash on hand to pay for any materials the natural environment can't provide. But three days in a row of rain (as there was a small shower in between the storms) got the farmers pulling out their plows and taking inventory of tools. Huge truckloads of seed (corn, millet, peanuts, sorghum, etc) having been pulling into my village and being stored in the newly built 'warehouse' that was built during the cold season.

Another new addition to this rainy season is my cat, Talata, who has never experienced the terror that can be induced by sitting in a thatched roof mud/cement hut while a hurricane is blowing overhead. Last Friday night (the first storm) he got so freaked he jumped out of my window - which is a new addition to my hut and a welcome one for ventilation - and didn't come back until some hours later. Saturday night he vanished off into the darkness and I haven't seen him since. With all the debris from the crazy storm on Sunday I am extremely concerned about his well being.

Yes, I know, he is after all just a cat, and I have another one but (and I hide from all pet owners out there) Talata is my favorite. He is my snuggle buddy. My baby that I literally got up at midnight to feed when he was only a few days old. I look for him every time I go into my hut; my head swivels like a top at every sound that might be a cat and Tennan (my older, girl cat) misses him as well.

Never having a pet before in my life, I haven't faced the prospect of losing one and it is emotionally nerve wracking. I pray everyday that when I get back from my brief stay here in Kolda, upon my arrival back in village my siblings will run up and tell me that Talata has returned.

In other news:

I've been working on the Michelle Silvester Scholarship for my middle school. You can find info here: http://senegad.org/scholarship.html. Thankfully I've got a couple awesome teachers that are super motivated to get these girls the support they need to be able to continue their education. One of my candidates has already faced - and barely managed to avoid - an early marriage. It's been great talking to them and getting their opinions and views on the struggles and obstacles that young women face in their community. Also what they want to do with their lives. Lots of them want to be teachers themselves and talk about how much they want to continue their education even if they do end up married.

The process includes interviews, an essay, copies of grades, teacher recommendations and a home visit. All but the grades and the home visits are done, the latter of which I'll be doing with my closest neighbor, Julia Bowers. It's been super nice to be able to do something that actually has some visible results and is much more under my personal control than waiting for my work partners to get their crap together.

Which is what is going on with both my well projects.

New middle school is supposed to built at some point so they can't dig the well until they know where the buildings are going to go. This makes this more and more difficult now that the rains have started and are only going to get more frequent. It's hard to dig a well and get cement to dry when it is pouring down rain.

Second - potential - well project is for a village about 25 km away. This village is in dire need of wells (they want 2). Over 220 people share one well with cattle, donkeys, sheep, goats and horses. And this one well is over 200 m from the village. So not only do women have to carry that water back and forth, they do all their laundry there at the well. Soap, bleach seeps into the ground. Stagnant pools of water draw insects - primarily mosquitoes - around the well, upping the odds of malaria cases.

It's a bad deal all together and they chief of the village asked me for some help.

So there is some possible work on that front, but only if this village gets their stuff together so I can fill out the paper work, submit the grant, get the funding and dig both wells before March. I know, 9 months sounds like plenty of time. But it is in fact a tight squeeze. I'll just have to see how it goes.

I really can't believe that 15 months has already gone by. In some ways it feels like so, so much longer than that and in others it feels like I flew into this country just a couple weeks ago. I now really have less time ahead than behind and I catch myself thinking about what I've done and how I might have made a difference in this time.

Have I? No idea. Being here has certainly changed me and I've learned more about myself than I ever thought possible. But what of my impact on the community I live in? Positive? Negative? Does it even exist? Will there ever be any way to know if I made any difference at all?

Should I even worry about it?

Lots of lovely questions that I will probably never get the answers to, or at least not while I am here. Hindsight and perspective are requisite, I think, to make any conclusions about a term of service like this. So maybe this time next year when I'm agonizing over my looming LSATs and grad school/law school applications I'll be able to look back and make a real decision.

As for now, I'll keep one eye out for my cat and the other on getting my work done in the ever shrinking amount of time I have left.

Cheers!
Christine