Occupy Khossanto*

I really didn’t want to get out of bed this morning. My breakfast porridge is coming later, now that cold season has kicked in nobody wants to get out of bed, even to make breakfast.  It’s SO cold - like all the way down into the 60s.  I get to snuggle up under all my sheets and blankets (Thanks Jay this is the only time of year I can use it), and I’ve always liked being under the covers.  It’s a welcome change to sleeping with no sheets and starfishing so that no part of my body is touching another.

Breakfast came nonetheless and I was forced to start my day, which was in fact a fairly rough start.  Roughness aside there certainly was a lot more noise than usual coming from the Case des Tous Petits (think pre-school then take away all the money) than the toddlers usually make.  That’s when I noticed host siblings had an urgency in them that usually isn’t there when they said they were going with the other students.

Turns out they went on strike!  I was annoyed at first because there are already so many reasons that the students don’t get enough time in school – teacher strikes, holidays, the whole affecté thing where teachers are not necessarily from anywhere nearby – but I had nothing better to do since everyone I work with was either taking part in the strikes or trying to resolve the situation so I went to check it out… from a safe distance.

I’m not going to lie and say I’m super informed about all of the Occupy Place demonstrations, but much like the “Arab Spring” the name seems apropos.  As I asked around to get the reason for the strike, that’s the word they used… well the French word, I got a few nonsense answers like because there’s no fence around the school.  I think that her dad was just talking about having to go cut bamboo for the school fence so she had it in her head. What the real reason the students took to the street was because of the dust. Give me a second, I’ll explain.

The road through Khossanto is just a dirt road, but it is heavily trafficked by transport heading to and from the gold mines.  Many of the vehicles seem fairly oblivious to the fact that they are going through a village and speed right through, even going so far as to swerve around the speed bumps.  Not only is this dangerous, I’ve been informed that someone was killed last month biking just outside of the village, but it also kicks up a lot of dust which gets everywhere – even when I have my hut all closed up an amazing amount of dust still makes its way in.  Another concern is the status of our lungs thanks to all the red dust in the air with all the schools (primary, middle, and aforementioned pre) are along that road… as is most of the village honestly.

By the time I got out there the students had stopped three tanker-trucks heading towards the mines and 3 pick-ups heading to Kedougou.  By the end of everything there were a few more bits of public transport and mine cars caught in the line.  I had seen a group of older students head to the meeting place with the PCR (local government official) so I decided to find somewhere high to get a good view of the street. Right when I got into position is when the Gendarme (police) showed up… with their riot gear.

I’m all about better safe than sorry, and the Gendarmes were definitely peaceful, as were the students, but I was worried their jumping into riot gear might scare the students into making a stupid mistake and throwing one of those stones they had used to build their road blocks.  They didn’t – everyone was very civil.  The students would yell and make noise ever so often, but it all seemed good-natured.  Villagers were let through the line if they needed, I heard one woman offer up an “Allah mu al deema,” “May God help you all.” That’s not in our sarcastic context but an honest wishing that the students be helped.

As I asked around everyone seemed to agree that the dust was an issue and that with this much traffic the road should be paved.  It would change Khossanto a lot – it’s just unclear how the project would be funded.  I’m fairly positive it’s not on the government’s short list of roads to pave.  Although the mines would benefit from the road it’s my opinion that if they were willing to pay for it the work would already be done.  Who knows what’s going to happen though, as the crowd dispersed I asked a friend if it was finished, “It’s not done yet, next Monday.”

Taa Bota!!*

There are two events in village that always send me into an emotional reaction that I don’t quite know what to do with. The first of those is a death - particularly the way women react. There is an almost ghostly wail they will go into, fairly often they are able to work themselves into such a frenzy that they will start to shake uncontrollably. I can’t help but feel for them in this display and for the loss of this individual as a whole. It is consoling that everyone knows that death is a pert of everyday life and that the wailing is, to a certain extent, what you are supposed to do. Everything just builds, like crying at a funeral; it’s almost impossible not to, even if you hardly know the person.

The second, for me at least, is infinitely more terrifying in its unpredictability and the palpable fear in the air. If you understand Malinké you may have already guessed this one thanks to the title – it’s fire. Khossanto just put one out and I decided to start writing this post as a way to calm me down.

In America, nine times out of ten, by the time you know there is a fire somewhere the fire trucks have beat you there (or in some cases led you there). You can watch in awe knowing everything is under control simply hoping that everyone is okay… and even that can be stressful. The village has no fire department, no running water so no fire hydrants. What Khossanto does have are wells around or past the 100ft mark and buckets or tubs like what I do laundry in to carry the water.

Anyway, today is Tabaski – the best descriptor I’ve heard is that it’s sort of like a Muslim Christmas here in Senegal. The Family killed a nice big ram and we will be eating most of it today for lunch. So everyone has their shiny new clothes on and we just got back from prayer service. One of my host sisters is getting her hair finished up at the last minute when another host sister comes rushing into the compound. We’ve all already felt the energy go up nearby and started hearing people yelling by the time she gives the call to arms, “Taa Bota!” (literally: Fire Left!).

This seems to happen every couple months in Khossanto, so unfortunately the feeling is familiar. Everyone rushes to their water and hoofs it over to wherever the fire is. I never keep enough water to actually do anything and I never want to get in the way so unfortunately spend too much time just pacing around my compound looking for a way to help. I’ve found a good spot for me to help is by lifting the large tubs onto people’s heads (if I were to do this I’d spill more water than would make it to the fire to be honest), the next step I’d want is to get a rope and bucket and be at the well pulling water for everyone. Usually the fire is out before anyone needs to go pulling from the well, but this one was by far the worst fire I’ve seen in village and smoke was still billowing when all the water was out.

Luckily there is a well in my family compound so all of the panic just comes rushing right into where I live. People are yelling in search of more water, there is the general din of people yelling where the fire is, my host dad is yelling commands to do things people are already doing, everyone’s trying to make sure all the kids in the compound are accounted for – among all that panic people also realize that the fire could spread. This is kind of a big deal since everyone has thatched roofs, fortunately this is actually a fairly easy task as long as you have around 10 people. The thatch is supported by a lattice of bamboo, which in most cases are simply sitting on top of the walls of the hut. Somewhere in my host dad’s yelling of commands he decided it was time to move the roof of the little hut we have in the corner for the goats so I pitched in with that real quick. Thankfully that turned out to be unnecessary.

One reassuring thing is that once the fire is out, which always seems to happen so suddenly, is that EVERYONE is talking about what happened… learning from their mistakes. In this case there are 2 stories that I heard. The less popular theory, which came from a seemingly more reliable source, is that someone took the coals from making tea and tossed them into their corn. Rainy season has been over for a little bit now so all the corn is pretty dry, so supposedly the corn started on fire then it spread to the roof of the hut in question. The more popular belief is that some kids were preparing tea with a big propane tank between to closely placed huts and turned the gas up too high. Either way it led to a huge fire.

That already seems like it happened so long ago today; life is back to normal here… well, as normal as it can be on Tabaski. Soon everyone will eat sheep until we pass out, then wake back up get dressed up in the fancy party clothes and greet everyone we know.

 Happy Tabaski!

Quick Pic Post 6

Bonus Photo: The key is that "thi" makes a "ch" sound.

Get it?!  Make sure you read the whole sign.

Camp de Jeunesse

Some time ago, not nearly as long ago as I should have, I put out a plea to a lot of people I know to donate to the Kédougou Youth Camp (Camp de Jeunesse). I asked for a TON of money and wound up getting a lot more than I expected so I just want to through out a thank you to everyone who donated or helped to spread the word (I still haven’t gotten to see a list of donators who said I could know who they are, so a more formal thank you to you all will be coming).

Here’s the spiel.

About a month and a half ago I found myself needing to move into Kédougou full time to help make sure this camp would be a success. I had been doing a lot of running around and coming back and fourth from site to take care of things last minute or do some damage control. I was stressing out far to much and feeling guilty about not being at site enough (site guilt) so I made the call to headquarters to get permission to turn my focus on the huge project that is camp. They said it was okay and I had successfully gotten rid of the stress of getting the panicked “do it now” phone calls because I’ve been at site. I have every confidence that it was a very worthwhile move.

Once in Kédougou full time I was able to work on my computer to get everything organized thanks to having a relatively steady power source. The house also had wireless internet, emails with attachments are glorious… that is until the router gets struck by lightning. All of the house electronics are dead now thanks to rainy season storms, I think they are actually going to pay to get the electric in the house grounded properly now that EVERYTHING got fried.

I digress (surprise?)

What was all that time in the big village spent doing? One thing I tried really had to do was get some kind of lesson plans put together for the different activities we would be doing then getting minions to translate them to French. I’m not going to lie, I didn’t do all that much work putting together the actual plans, just coordinated their creation then collected them onto my computer. My end goal here is to put together two binders, one in French and one in English so that we can be on the same page with the Senegalese group we work with to put on the camp (The Association for the Sustainable Development of Kédougou or ADDK). I was explaining this plan to one of the counselors during the camp and he got all excited and said that he’d send me information on the activities they do so I can just have everything in one place. I hope he follows through with that, Magic Painting is pretty awesome but I really want those songs written down. There were also countless planning meetings, discussions about what to do with our lacking funds, contacting all the applicants we accepted (we wound up with 76 campers and contacted a lot more people for confirmation.

I wound up working with Baba Touré a lot in the weeks leading up to camp. He’s a great kid, he had been a camper the past 3 years and stepped up to play a pretty major role in the planning of camp this year. In fact he invited me over to his place for Korité, the big holiday that marks the end of Ramadan. I wanted to go back to Khossanto to spend the holiday with my host family, but that would have meant not being around for the few days leading up to camp, not really an option. Very glad I decided to head to his house during the day, it was great to be surrounded by Malinké again instead of Pulaar, the majority in Kédougou, or French which I’m still not horribly comfortable in.

A few days after Korité the students started showing up from all over the region and staying with family or friends in Kédougou. This is when it all started to get real for me… summer camp is actually going to happen! We were all pretty much set, except one big problem, we never really finished the schedule. I had Peace Corps’ activities scheduled for some time, but I’d been trying to meet with the ADDK guy in charge of programming for days but our schedules never lined up. So the night before everyone got on the bus to Dindefello I stayed up and quick filled in the blanks with items from the random list of activities I was told ADDK could do. This wound up not getting set until the second day of camp, and thanks to not having the foresight and buying their materials ahead of time the first day of camp had to get changed around a lot. Peace Corps volunteers were the only ones prepared for their activities the morning of the first day, so the group of 9 volunteers helping out at the start of camp were kind of put through the ringer right off the bat. Once the schedule was finished and approved things settled down a lot, but you have to appreciate the flexibility of everyone involved.

Backtracking a bit, I mentioned there was a bus ride to take everyone from Kédougou to the campement in Dindefello where we were having the camp. Thankfully after last rainy season the laterite road to Dindefello was regraded, meaning the parts of the road that last year were absolutely terrifying to watch cars of kids go over were now just really bad sections. However, most of the kids and volunteers were loaded into an old charter bus. Being on the bus with all those excited campers singing songs I recognized from last year was amazing, you could literally feel their energy. In my opinion it was the perfect way to drop all the other volunteers into the camp spirit, if not force it on them. We almost made it, and then in a pretty good-looking section of road we got stuck. What happened is that when the put the new laterite down they didn’t really do anything to what was under it, and in this particular place in the road what was under it amounted to pudding. It was just waiting for something heavy enough to come along and hit it in just the right place and we were that lucky. Everyone sat and waited for a while, the girls were released first, after about an hour, to hike the remaining couple kilometers to Dindefello. The boys were kept behind to help with the excavation to get the bus out. After another couple hours all hope was lost and the boys were sent to hike those last couple K as well. All baggage was left behind and we contacted another car to pick that up and bring it to us later that day - an auspicious start to camp.

During camp we had the Challenge Course run by Patrick this year (I did it last year) and it was the same situation were he needed a translator to help him with the French, which most of the time was Little Jess. Patrick has had a lot of experience running camp and did an amazing job, unluckily for him though challenge course was scheduled for nearly every activity period. Art was headed up by our resident artist Sully, he did camp two years ago but had to miss it last year, thanks to his hard work the kids were ready to go when it came to creative thinking. Plus we had some beautiful artwork hung all around the campement, just heartwarming. LaRocha saved the day with neem lotion and nutritional porridges for the first and second year campers respectively. Their wares were then sold at the weekly market thanks to marketing lessons from Tatiana and Little Jess. First aid sessions were once again run by Eric who seemed to have a lot better luck getting his message across – tourniquets are not the first thing to do when someone is bleeding. Rachel, Meaghan, and Big Jess did a bunch of work with gardening and tree nurseries with our favorite Trees For the Future guy Karumba. Mike and Frank were the sports masters, who knew ultimate Frisbee would go over so well and that they’d get the rules so quickly? Ian took the Creative Writing lesson plan Hannah wrote up and did a great job on that with limited materials. Spanish tourists were in and out of Dindefello throughout the camp to see the waterfall, one group in particular sat and listened to a bunch of their creative writings and were a great audience for them. I’m sure I’ve forgotten someone or something – a highlight of the second week, for me anyway, was the Sexual Health talks Meera led – I never got a chance to sit in on a full one and did want to do too much popping in and out because of the sensitive nature of the topic but I heard great things and the kids got a lot out of it, including ONE wristbands which were in high demand. I’ve listed certain people doing certain activities but it should be known that everyone kind of did everything (teamwork makes the dream work).

ADDK’s counselors lead a bunch of activities as well as all kinds of song and dances. The last day of camp wrapped up with the Olympics, all of camp broke up into 4 groups and the games began. ADDK took care of all of the planning and running of that so it was nice for me and the other volunteers still around to get the day to kind of relax, be with the campers, and act as crowd control. With that camp was done, we held an awkward middle school dance party at the campement, people were lifted into the air, I was gifted a new shirt that my head can barely fit through, everyone was happy, girls cried to be leaving their new friends, and no cars got stuck. It’s kind of hard to believe it’s all over.

PS: Happy Birthday Mom and Seamus & Happy Wedding Lisa and Dereck

PPS: Here's a link to one of the ADDK Counselor's blog.  He has a few posts about camp with some videos, lots of pictures, but words are in French.  Kédougou Avenir

For more pictures check out the Facebook Album

Crème Cassia*

I could waste a bunch of time explaining why I haven’t updated in a while and apologizing and all that… M buŋ, I refuse. I was busy / lazy / who cares. Here’s a fun thing that happened recently.

Mandinkas go patriotic

The 4th of July means party times in Kédougou. Lots of good food (said first because I and a new volunteer were in charge of it), a “4k” run with the community and volunteers, friends coming down from all over the country, and of course Fireworks (thanks to volunteers around Dakar). The fireworks this year included something akin to the “Saturn Missile” and on the bigger end, for those in the know, more on par with the Fisk fireworks of my childhood.

If all that wasn’t enough of a scene most people also dressed up to a certain extent. Kédougou region volunteers tried to stick to a trailer park theme since the hotel of choice in Gou was closed for repairs. The goal was mesh tank tops and jean shorts, the market was tricky to work with, but we managed. My favorites though had to be the Kolda girls as the patriotic Disney princesses. It’s amazing what you can get a Senegalese tailor to do.

Once the festivities were over I found myself helping out with a Neem Lotion Tourney, which did not allow me time to head back to my village first. I wound up spending a couple extra days in Kédougou (It has come to my attention that I might not have provided pronunciation: Kay-Do-Gu) working on things for Summer Camp. In fact it was a surprise camp meeting the day I planed to leave that sent me into a state of confusion that caused me to stay an extra night in Gou (short for Kédougou). The next morning, after a farewell smoothly, I caught a car to Saraya (Sar-ee-uh / Sa-rye-ah depending on who you want to make fun of, I tend to stick with the former). The change in departure for me wound up convincing another volunteer, Kate, to join in on the tourney; which, by the way, was headed by Leah (the one and only, part of the Mandinka Trio of yore). After lunch at Kate’s place we hopped on out bikes and met up with Leah and Ian at his village, Missira Dantila, for a neem lotion (Crème Cassia) demonstration:

“Do you all know the Palu?" (Malaria is Paludisme in French)
“Yeah! You get all hot, and your body gets all sore. You get very sick, it’s not good.”
“Can you do any work?”
“No!”
“So your men can’t farm, women can’t cook, and your children can’t go to school. It’s not good.”
“It’s not good a lot.”
“So how do you get it?”
“When the rains come, and the mosquitoes come and one with malaria bites you.”
“Right, so how can you prevent it?”
“Sleep under a mosquito net!” (Mosquito nets have been drilled into people for years as THE way to end Malaria).
“But what about before you go to bed? During dinner and while you are sitting and chatting, do mosquitoes bite you then?”
“Yeah! It’s not good, we can still get Malaria… in fact that kid has it right now.” (For now the government provides free malaria meds; I wouldn’t worry about her, she was getting treatment and didn't look bad enough to be worried.)
“Well here’s how you can make your very own mosquito medicine:”

One of these girls has Malaria...
it's the one in the middle.

1. Boil two handfuls of neem tree leaves until the water turns green.
2. Cut one big bar of soap into the smallest pieces you can into a tub.
3. Strain the leaves out of the green water and add the hot water to the tub of soap pieces.
4. Stir it really really hard until all the soap is gone.
5. Add 100cfa (about a shot glass / tea glass) of oil and stir.
6. Once cooled, apply to skin as a lotion.

The mob moves in on the fence

This is when we hand out samples of the lotion we just demonstrated, which can get tricky, we kind of started a riot in Missira Dantila… Elbows were thrown, free samples stolen, mothers covered in green foam… My personal favorite though was the woman who stole the bucket with about half of the sample in it and proceded to run through a hut and climb over a fence to get away from the mob. Once there she tried to vend the samples to other women from the opposite side of the fence. Her plan worked well until some of the other women realized they also could climb the fence and get to the bucket directly.  This wound up being a good opportunity to discuss the marketability of Neem Lotion in the village... once all the lotion was gone and we came out of hiding.

After Missira we spent the next few days doing the demo in other villages. I helped out with Samecouta, Nafadji, Baitilai, Faraba, and Kondokho. There was a plan to do it in my village, Khossanto, as well; God did not agree and after waiting all afternoon for a car to take us there we headed back to Kédougou. I had wanted to just bike the remainder of the way back to Khossanto by myself, but once again camp issues came up and I found myself needing to return to Gou.

On a more permanent scale, in each village we did a demo we also left our tag - A spray paint stencil of how to make Neem lotion in 6 easy steps (see picture from earlier with Malaria girl). Four colors to each step, it’s pretty ingenious in my opinion… idea by Kellen, execution by Sully, fun for all ages.

Because it's been a while... Baby in a tux!

Quick Pic Post 5

Collecting blood on the magic wand

For the Malaria rapid test

Hello

I was coming into Kédougou yesterday and I passed 2 women on my bike so I greeted them:

Me - "I niŋ che" (Malinké)
Younger Woman - "Bonjour" (French)
Older Woman - "A jaramma" (Pulaar)

I laughed about this for a bit, but I think it gives a good peak into just how complicated the language situation is here.

Also...

Look what we found!

Pen-Pals Anyone?

The English teacher at my Middle School is looking for English speaking pen-pals, and this is my widest reaching outlet.  I explained that our best chance was to pair up with a French class (Keep in mind that French is also a second language for these students) and maybe trade off, or do the letters half and half and it was well received.

The fact of the matter is that the students never get a chance to use English outside of the class so any bit of contact with native speakers is a big deal.  The teacher wrote up a proposal for me to send out, I'm adding it to the end of this post in grey so you can get some more information - PLEASE CONTACT ME IF YOU ARE AT ALL INTERESTED.  Just a contact is not a commitment, we'll have to discuss the logistics of everything.

I really think this is an amazing opportunity for everyone involved. Thanks for your consideration and help it is greatly appreciated.

Kellen and a teacher working on the Bembou World Map

Republic of Senegal
Region of Kedougou
Department of Saraya
Khossanto Secondary School
English Club


Twinning Project of the English Club
1. Description of the context:
Senegal is a country where English is taught as a second language. The government takes much importance to the learning of that language. However the same potentialities are not offered to all students.
Learning English in Khossanto faces a lot of problems, which can be ranged from pedagogical to material ones. The fact is that Khossanto is too much isolated to the rest of the world and students are limited to their world; the only means by which the learn the language is the teacher. We do believe that Khossanto Secondary students can be given a chance. How?


2. Expectations:
This twinning project is an idea of the English Club with the help of David PUHL (Iburahima KONDJIRA) – volunteer of the “Corps de la Paix American” – who in fact, is willing to find penpals for the students.
Learning a language is learning to communicate. If you are interested in this project, if you are willing to help students foster their motivation, if you want to be a penpal with one of the students contact us.


The Headmaster  --  The Teacher Coordinator  --  The Teacher Supervisor
Samba DIALLO        Niamady SAMOURA              Aliou DIOUF
The Student Chairman of the English Club  --  Peace Corps Volunteer
Mamadou DIABY                                                  David PUHL

What's the hardest part of being here?

The easy, gut response answer has little to do with development, which is what this blog is supposed to be about (sorry for not posting as often as I thought I could by the way, it turned out to be a lot more difficult than I thought); but I’ll go into that a little anyway for the honest answer.

The Fam.

I miss things in the States - food, family, friends, and the overall ease of just existing. In America the customer is always right, it is easy to take for granted just how much you expect that treatment. That concept has quite made it to Senegal yet and can be frustrating – there are no lines, you need to barge through the crowd and get up to that counter. Once there you might have to put up a fight to get the right price, or to get any kind of service at all. Be sure to greet everyone or you might wind up losing any bartering power you might have had.

It gets tiresome needing to plan your trips to the market based on what money you have on you, don’t expect change for that 10 mille bill to be at just any boutique you go to. If you want fruit or any kind of food really you should be sure to have very close to correct change… but not too close, they might not have the smaller coins either.

On a more personal end, I’ve reached the one-year mark in Senegal a week or so ago and miss seeing the faces I was so used to seeing before coming here. Pictures, Facebook, and Skype can only do so much – It’s been a year since I’ve hugged my parents, just sat with my best friend and went over all our problems. It’s shocking how much those late night talks can be missed.

Some Friends from home

My parents love to work in the garden; I want to see what they’ve done. Did my dad finish off the basement yet? My cousin’s children are growing up fast and there are two new ones that I have yet to meet. It goes the other way to, there are a few faces I’m never going to see again. Moving away from that train of thought, friends have been getting engaged and married… or even just finding a new boy/girlfriend… but these are all sacrifices I knew I was making when I signed up for this and the bottom line is that I do not regret it.

Moving into now what I think was more the point of the question – As I said, I was prepared to make sacrifices when I signed up for the Peace Corps. I was expecting to be in a small village with no electricity or running water. I’m not going to lie; I was hoping to live in a thatched roof hut. I didn’t expect to have the cell phone service that came to my village in October either.

Squat toilets have been a fun new experience – and can be their own adventure when it comes to the public variety. Sorry it it’s too much information, but toilet paper is a thing of the past unless it’s a western toilet. Once you get the system down a bucket bath (a misnomer, it’s really more of a ‘cup shower’) it pretty enjoyable. Heck, leave your bucket out in the sun for a while and you’ve even got hot water, be careful though because it can get too hot.

My hut has definitely become my home base here in Senegal. I’ve made an agreement with the ants who live in the walls, but am having a turf war with those living in my latrine. I’ve gotten used to the farm animals that hang around the family compound – I have my favorite goats and the ones I chase away on sight.

All that said, for me right now, the most difficult thing about living here is transportation. More often than not I choose to bike the 85km between my village and the regional capitol of Kédougou. Cars make the trip most days, leaving my village in the morning and coming back in the afternoons. The thing is there is no set time and depending on the car you might be stopping at every village along the way. The ride from Kédougou has taken under two hours and more than three and a half. The car has left anywhere between 3 and 7 PM, sometimes not leaving at all after sitting any waiting for it for four hours. Now that the rains have been gone for a while the dust is back so everyone is getting off the cars a shade more red than when they got on. I won’t go into details on the effect of that dust on the inside of your nose.

Cars will usually not go unless they are full – meaning each person is packed in as tightly as possible. Think about being crowded by your current standards, then add a couple more people. Also, I’ve ridden next to a man holding three live chickens. Sorry PETA, but I’ve never seen anyone hesitate to stick a sheep into a rice sack (all but its head so it can breathe) then strap it to the top of the car. In those cases you need to be careful next to the open windows in case the animal has to use the bathroom.

For the longer rides, where you have to move across country – to the capitol, Dakar, for example – it is much the same story. For those trips we fill up 7-Places, station wagons from the 60s or 70s that not surprisingly hold 7 passengers. We’re lucky in Senegal, I’ve heard they are called 8 or 9-Places in other countries. Pretty soon they are all going to just fall apart beyond repair and the public transportation system will crumble. Luckily though each driver is a pretty decent mechanic so when the car stops he can usually get it started again – oftentimes just pouring some water on something. It’s not out of the realm of possibility though for your driver to call someone else to come take you the rest of the way if he can’t fix the car fast enough. It’s convenient, but there can be a lot of waiting.

The conclusion here is that public transportation is never comfortable, you always wind up waiting for something, and it is relatively expensive. Despite your overpaying though most cars are still falling apart. I avoid it when I can, but I’ll always need to take it from time to time – I’m learning to turn off the part of me that cares about all this stuff in an effort to keep my blood pressure at a reasonable place.

Sanji Kiliŋ*

Today marks one year since the day that I landed in Senegal along with the rest of “The Super Stage.” An event auspicious enough that my neighbor’s goat gave birth to not one, not two, but three kids under the bench behind my hut where I’ve taken to reading in the evenings. My contribution to the celebration will be a series of random tangents on my mind right now.

This morning they started laying out the foundation of the new Mosque in Khossanto. A cow was killed in honor of this occasion – I like to pretend it was for me, but I never did get my hands on any of that meat like I was promised. In addition, lets just say that a groundbreaking just wouldn’t be the same without arguments about both the location and size of the mosque by the village elders. It was a great show to be honest.

The Elders

I’ve built trenches (Brumes & Swales) around the few green things in my back yard to make watering my them with my bucket-bath water easier… so far so good.

The Latrine ants have stepped out of like for the last time! Bleach has made its way onto the playing field and I will be reviewing my IPM noted from training.

On a recent visit to Mamakhono I got at least three different people telling me, “I kurrata!” aka “You’re done,” as in you know all there is to know about Malinké.

Tonight, after giving my host dad a kola nut that I didn’t want I risked a conversation with the man. It came to a point where he clearly did not understand what I was trying to say so I mentally rechecked my language and tried again. He still didn’t get it, at that point his friend chimed in with, “He said he wants to see the place. What, do you not understand Malinké?” Take that Mr. “You don’t understand anything.”

I was showing my pictures to a guy who’s been living in my compound – he came across on of my graduation pictures where I’m with my parents he made two comments.

1. My dad and I have similar faces 
2. My mom is “Trés Belle.” That’s right mom… watch Beauty and the Beast if you don’t understand. 

A little after the graduation photo comments he detailed is plans to go to France for three months, pick up his woman friend, come back to Senegal, and when she wants to marry him he’ll pull out, “Sorry, I’m a Muslim, my family won’t let me marry a Christian.” (Sorry Mom)

Today I saw an airplane in the sky; it was weird that it was weird.

A bee stung me two days ago – that hurts! I still have a reddish spot and it’s all itchy. I left the nice tree I was sitting in because of the whole swarm coming after the stung one thing.

I biked a new way back to site from Saraya – It was amazing. Dear Adventure Racing friends come visit… actually, anyone come visit, I won’t make you bike if you don’t want to.

Albuquerque

I’ve now been in charge of a radio show all by myself. Well, someone else was there, but I wrote the script all by myself and did most of the talking and worked the soundboard (that’s what it’s called right?). I like to think that I have fans.

Dear everyone, if I see another map without a title or compass… so help me…

I think I found a home for the trees in my nursery that haven’t been eaten yet. I just need to find them protection and water.

Recent text (speaking of trees) received that made me do the happy dance: “I got you 1 orange, 2 mandarins, 1 grapefruit, 1 avocado, 1 pomegranite.”

AIDS causerie led by a woman, in Malinké, for a classroom of teenaged boys in my village. AWESOME.

Well, I’ve lost my train of thought and I really want to finish my book tonight. Thanks for reading, Year One done!

Because it's cute

Right to Sight... Do what now?*

Last week I made the trip to Tambacounda (Tamba) to help with an Eye Clinic. Another Gou volunteer, KC, and I had booked tickets on the 5am bus to Tamba, meaning that be the time we got there we would still have pretty much a full day outside of travel. Unfortunately, about twenty minutes into the ride the bus broke down enough that it became obvious that it could not make the full ride to Tamba. So, the bus turned around and we made our way back to Gou. It sounds like this all happened fairly quickly… After getting our money back in a shockingly painless procedure we made our way to the “Garage” just as a 7-Place filled up and left for Tamba. Giving us the first 2 seats on the next car, which wound up leaving Kédougou at the same time we were expecting to be arriving in Tamba.

Now, moving into the Eye Clinic – A group of American health workers by the name of “Right to Sight and Health” sent two doctors and two nurses to Tamba to do as many cataract surgeries as possible. I helped out for the second week, during the first week there was another doctor around who happened to be the father of one of my Stage-mates. She heard about the clinic which has happened in Kédougou the last two years from older volunteers, told her dad the eye doctor about it, and he contacted the Right to Sight people and the rest is history. A fun story I know little about.

Anyway, Right to Sight really has a system down and knows what they are doing and likes to work with Peace Corps Volunteers when possible. Where we come in handy is all the cutting open of the eyes. Kidding, it’s the translating. The health system in Senegal is similar to the education system in that it is made up of a lot of ‘affectés.’ Meaning the person working at the Hospital or health post is not necessarily from that place and often times their spouse is back home. There is no guarantee that they speak the local language at all, nor is there any training provided to them. Normally this isn’t an issue since a majority of the public isn’t willing to pay for medical treatment – that would be the group of people Right to Sight is looking to help most. So, we step in there to translate into the variety of local languages that the area has. My mediocre French wasn’t even that much of an issue since we were working with American doctors – They did train a Senegalese doctor using French during the first week, but I wasn’t around yet.

So I showed up for my first day on the job and went to my assigned post… the operating room! The two other volunteers and I in there weren’t there handing the doctor his tools ‘stat’ or anything, but we did had tools to the nurses STERILY and they would hand them to the doctors. Gauze and other bubble-packaged items may never be opened the same again. It’s fun to not touch the inside.

There were two set-ups in the room so two surgeries could be happening at the same time, one of them was even a training microscope so during the brief bits of down time when we weren’t fetching stuff or telling patients to lie still we would take turns watching the surgery. Here’s a little rundown:

1. “Block” eye with injection so they can’t feel anything or see anything or move their eye. 
2. Insert speculum to keep their eye open 
3. Sew a thread through the white of the eye that you can then clip to the eyebrow to keep the eye from moving around as you work on it. 
4. Burn stuff so their eyes don’t bleed 
5. Make a longer cut along the top of the iris and a tiny one on the outside 
6. Stick in the pointy thing and wiggle until you can see the cataract spin in a full circle – careful not to rip the bag! 
7. Use the squirty loop thing to pull out the cataract, which is basically a foggy lens. 
8. Make sure all the little foggy chunks are out. 
9. Insert new lens implant 
10. Make sure the eyeball is fully inflated and the implant stays where it is meant to be. 
11. Add liquid that seals the holes you cut in 
12. Take everything off/out and put a patch over the eye (unfortunately not of the pirate variety) 

That’s it! All done! Hopefully you can see tomorrow when we take the patch off. Most people were thanking us before they even got off the operating table, it was really cute; for many of them though it was their only chance to see again.

By the end of the two weeks 185 cataracts were removed thanks to the Right to Sight and Health people. The last two were relatively noteworthy in that on the last day the American doctors were doing surgery – they stayed another day to do all the follow ups and pack their equipment – it turned out that there were two women waiting for surgery that couldn’t get it… for reasons that amounted to mistakes on our part. With that in mind a group of Peace Corps Volunteers set themselves to the task of convincing / guilting the Senegalese surgeon into doing the two surgeries on Friday so the Right to Sight people would still cover part of it with their money. By the time I finished helping with the last surgery they had been successful! From what I hear it was kind of a sneak attack where he was basically left no choice but to agree to doing the surgeries without being a HUGE jerk.

For the literate and illiterate

Speaking of this Senegalese surgeon… so the American doctors taught him this new surgery technique for cataract removal. By the end of the two weeks he was a master, moving faster and (according to the American doctors) with better results than his trainers. One of the Americans was so impresses that she wanted to make sure to watch him do a few surgeries to see if she could learn anything from him! I found the whole thing really impressive.

All in all it was a really good week, a good reenergizing that I was in desperate need of. There was the added bonus of getting to see friends that I hadn’t seen in a really long time all week, and get to know a few more. Then, back to Gou, and time to explain myself to my village.