Color In Senegal

Hello to all my friends and family!! Thinking of you always but my experiences here in Senegal continue to get bigger and better every day. I have been very busy for the past 3 weeks after completing the five week challenge in village and I would love to tell you all about it.

Here goes:

The five week challenge is a little challenge that our country director created to help us stick with the harsh requirements of staying in a small village for five weeks. It means that we may not spend a night in another location other than our respective huts for the first five weeks after we install but we are however allowed to leave site for a day. I personally thought this was an easy task. I ended up going to the city of Kaolack twice for day trips during the first five weeks but my tiny village of 700 people is lucky enough to be located only 10 kilometers away from the medium sized city of Kaolack; which, also is home to the second largest market in Africa and the largest market in Senegal! Yeah its pretty legit. Like a dirty maze filled with stray cats, fish bones, puddles of foot washing water and a bazillion people trying to get your attention. You gotta be on your game.

My family in village is wonderful but also very huge. Reminds me of the Bryant clan in many ways. There have been baby goat births almost every week including one on my first day while eating lunch. It was pleasant. Asides from that I have done a lot of wondering, reading, chilling and sweating under Neem trees, climbing baobabs, playing with children and conversing with people outside of my sister-in-law’s boutique. I love all of the children despite their loud volume at all hours. I’ve been eating lots of peanuts and peanut butter as Kaolack is one of the regions where peanut production is staple. Another product of the region is salt so on many roads you can glimpse large white mountains of salt. I have also been dabbling in a bit of work as my last blog post mentions. I have learned how to make a tree pepineer aka nursery and will start an intensive bed of Morenga trees when I get back to my site.

So I mention “when I get back to my site” because I have been away from site for 2 weeks. It seems like a long time but I think that is because a lot has been going on including our language seminar which included more language classes and sleepovers with my friends nearby from my stage. What cut that in half for me however was a small insignificant trip to Dakar to meet the president…of the United States. Jk. It was by no means insignificant and so very neat of an experience. Meeting Obama was a big deal to the 30 or so volunteers that were chosen. I had to book it out of my village however after I found out they might stop people from entering Dakar at a certain time the evening before we were to meet him because of his arrival. I fortunately made it before dark and after asking 30 people for directions to the Peace Corps regional house in Dakar I made it to “six” (French pronunciation) as it is nicknamed. It was so cool to meet other volunteers and converse about what we would say to Obama if we had the chance to talk. The next day we all spent time getting ready to American music and shaving our underpits for Mister President. Soon we were on our way to the embassy excitedly talking about what was going to happen. We ended up waiting in a line in front of the prestigious Radison Bleu for a lot less security than I imagined and then entered a small tent where about 3 or 4 hundred people eventually gathered. It was a get-together for American hands in Senegal. After waiting 2 or 3 hours, the president made his appearance and made a lovely concise speech thanking us all for our hard work despite hardships and frustrations from time to time being away from family members and friends back home in America. The President had also had a meeting earlier that day with our PC country Director as a guest to discuss food security and successful governance in Senegal. SO it was a neat experience all in all. After his speech, he made his way down some barriers to shake hands and greet people. I unfortunately was behind two rows of people but I saw him and was not 2 feet from his face. There was somewhat of a mad rush so I can understand his brief greetings before being escorted out of the tent. It was strange how the Senegalese were more crazed to see him than the Americans. He did however talk to a PCV and asked if he was “having fun.” He did not mention PC in his speech but I gladly shouted it at the end of the list of people thanked before the round of applause.

The rest of my time in Dakar was wonderful and I had a lot of fun on the town that night. After this trip to Dakar I traveled back to site to catch the very end of language seminar and to spend a nice weekend with my family, showing them pictures of Dakar and Obama. However, I was soon off to the Kaolack garage again for an 8 hour trip down south to the Region of Kedougou. Every year there is a very large gathering of PC Senegal volunteers in the beautiful mountainous region for the American Independence Day celebration. Basically a few days of wild and crazy American fun! We had pool parties in the rain and went all out decked in red, white and blue and American flags and temp tats and sparkles and anything festive you can imagine! Had so much fun, it was unreal! Kind of roughed up my body a bit but it was bound to happen after a very chill lifestyle in village for a month and a half. Also became a 20 course meal for a family of mosquitoes but totally worth it down there. Our hotel was right on the Gambia River and we were all very hopeful to see a family of hippos floating by. It didn’t happen but there was something resembling an otter or lizard and then much mysterious pieces of wood and trash including a Talibe bucket. (a Talibe is a young Koranic student who must beg for money and food). We also held a bird funeral on the river for the unfortunate dove that ended its life on a hotel room window. It was absolutely gorgeous watching the rain storms travel over the tree tops and fields across from the river and the humongous horizontal streaks of the thickest lightning I’ve ever seen in the sky!! Went on a great adventure one night risking our lives and our shoes to traverse large puddles in the muddy roads at night and then talking to taxi drivers and club owners to show us where we could get a drink or two. After Kedougou we took a ten hour trip back up to Kaolack before heading up to Thies to the PC training center to attend a Training to learn tips on how to teach English to Senegalese. Despite the two day training, a lot was covered and since it was run by the State Department, I believe they were very effective in shaping our skills to bring back to our communities, who are head over heels excited to learn English. I hope to use the skills I learned in this training to help out with an English club for high school students in Kaolack and perhaps be a part-time English teach for a preschool in a nearby village by the river. I have high ambitions but I guess that is what all this prep and training and getting to know my town and Senegal is for.

Now I am kickin it at the center. I am loving it here as it’s quite relaxing with zero expectations! I get to chill and internet and have fun nights with great conversation. I’ve been meeting and getting to know more and more volunteers in other regions during each event I’ve attended in the past few weeks. The only downside is I have essentially zero money which is never any good. I will attend a SeneGAD meeting for Gender and Development in Senegal since it is a topic I am interested in and that is the area the scholarship project I did falls under. I’d like to find out about as much as I can that is going on with Peace Corps and get involved. It’s almost a bit like college. Endless amounts of opportunities that you just gotta seek out. I am happy to do all of this but also that I get to go back to my village and back to speaking in only Wolof, seeking out the desires and needs of my community. Wooo!

I’ll leave you with some pictures as I normally do!

Peace Out!