Long Time Coming*

It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything, and I do have a real reason for that… besides the whole living in Africa excuse. That reason being my belief in the teachings of Thumper’s father, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” I’ll admit it’s an exaggeration that I haven’t had ANYTHING nice to say, but there was a rough patch there for a bit (good job support crew on that by the way). Time for a breakdown.

A major buzzword in Peace Corps is ‘Sustainable’ and if you know me at all you’re probably thinking in the environmental direction and words like ‘Eco’, ‘Renewable’, and ‘Green’ are popping up too. Well you’re wrong; we’re talking about having the projects I work on continuing after I leave Senegal (side note, I do really want those other words associated with my projects too). A well-timed example of trying to make a project sustainable is the Summer Camp from a couple posts ago. The camp started a few years ago as a PC volunteer’s project, over the years it has been transitioning more an more into the hands of ADDK. That is, if Peace Corps had to pull out of Senegal right now a Summer Camp would probably happen (albeit probably only slightly resembling what we would do).

For various reasons ranging from my shy personality to cultural traits that seem specific to my village there was a question as to whether or not any work I might be able to do there would be sustainable. That question quickly led to wondering about the need for a volunteer at that site. That’s kind of a big deal, to switch sites after spending more than half a year making the connections and earning the trust to get work done is… less than desirable. In the end my supervisor (APCD) stepped in and put everything on a new track, now it’s up to me to make it work.

So we’re back to a positive and productive place in my service. Just the baseline (host) daddy issues remain and I’ve gotten pretty good at dealing with that. There’s the additional bonus that all the stress and issues distracted me from the fact that I was missing the Holiday Season with my family in America.

Now I have people to talk to, permissions to get, seeds to collect and purchase, paints to buy as well, and I might need to refresh myself on some soccer drills. The project I want to get started ASAP is the one that is inherently not sustainable, but is the easiest to start and add to my street cred – an English Club. Get together with some middle schoolers every week or so and speak English, easy enough. I’ll probably even be able to sneak in some environmental propaganda as I refuse to give up on an anti-litter campaign. Hopefully this English Club will help me get Environmental Groups going at the primary and middle schools in Khossanto. These are the groups who are going to get the school gardens started up (and hopefully pick up some of that litter).

As for the paints and permissions, there are some big blank walls just begging for a good mural, plus I need to get some stuff tagged with the Peace Corps logo in village – there’s a Canadian Flag at the middle school right now (they funded the renovations). I’m planning on at least doing an AIDS prevention mural and a hand washing/ soap use one at the middle school. I like to paint, so hopefully more will happen too.

On a more immediate level I have managed a few small successes in my family. It’s Cold Season right now, I’m talking long sleeves at night and still sweating in my t-shirt at noon, but every morning one of my first thoughts is debating if it is worth it to put on socks or not because the sun is coming out. Cold season is giving people coughs (including me), which brings me to my small successes. COVER YOUR MOUTH! I’ve only had to remind my host father a couple times to not cough directly into the food bowl, and this last time he did it I think was because we had just had a fight and I was eating a lot. Nonetheless, it is a lot better. An even smaller success comes in the form of my little brother Ibu, he has done a lot less coughing directly into my face while we play. He even coughs into his elbow, but I think that’s just making fun of me. Hey, I’m not going to fight it, if it picks up a good habit by making fun of me it’s all good.

The next step is getting him not to cough into the food bowls either, he’s graduating from the women’s bowl and coming the bowl I eat at more often… but he’s small so when he coughs it just goes in his section. Don’t want to rush anything; I’ve got a good thing going here. If you give a mouse a cookie though… now that they are starting to cough into their hands I’m reminded how often they use soap to wash their hands. The answer is only if they use soap to shower with, which is not often, and the women when they do laundry but that’s unintentional anyway.

Donding Donding / Petit à Petit / Little by Little

My Work

There was a request for more information for more details on what I am doing in Senegal. As it turns out this is a fairly good time to talk about that, I’m just getting out of some issues at site leading to meetings with important people and a more defined role for me in Khossanto.

I’m going to take the Peace Corps mission right off of the website to make things easier for me to begin with:

Mission 

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps to promote world peace and friendship.  The Peace Corps' mission has three simple goals: 

1. Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women. 

2. Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served. 

3. Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans. 

From my end this blog in and of itself is helping me reach that third goal (thanks!), and just living here takes care of the second goal. It’s that first goal that gets tricky. Peace Corps is run a little differently in each host country but in recent years the focus has been a lot more on development. It probably has a lot to do with the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals.

I think I’m getting a little off track now, so let’s get back to it… what am I doing in Khossanto. I guess I’m still working on what do I want to do there and that has to do with those issues I mentioned earlier. Whatever it is I do I want to make sure that it is sustainable in that once I leave the project will continue to be effective. A problem arises when you can’t find anyone in your community to work with. I was having problems with that for a while but quite recently we had a meeting in my village with my Senegalese supervisor and the important people of Khossanto. The meeting went very well and led to some fairly solid project ideas that I hope to get started in the next few months. I’ll highlight a few of my favorites.

SCHOOL CLUBS. I’ve wanted to form environmental clubs at the primary and middle schools in my village since before I even made it there. This will be a chance for me to really get the environmental message to the youth, which in my opinion is the most effective way to make a change happen. I’ve been uncertain how to really get these started until this meeting where a good stepping-stone was suggested at the middle school level - English Club. Some students have chosen to learn English… as a native speaker I think it is safe to say that my help would be appreciated. Get together once a week or so and chat, this gives me a chance to introduce certain environmental concepts as well as get some more work on my French and Malinké. Here’s a quick list of some topics I hope to work on in these clubs: littering is bad, all frogs won’t kill you, some insects are good for your garden, wash your hands with soap after going to the bathroom and before eating, go to the bathroom in the latrines, compost, and I’m sure more will pop up as time goes on.

WOMEN’S GROUP. My village already has a well-developed women’s’ group with a sizeable garden and previous volunteers have helped them to practice good gardening practices. Where I can help is by helping to update some of those gardening practices tailoring it to the land they are using (it happens to spend the rainy season underwater). Another more difficult thing I want to do with the women’s group is to try to help put them in contact with people who want to buy the vegetables they grow in their garden. I also want to work with them to get a tree nursery started so we can plant trees at the schools and in family compounds that will provide shade from the hot hot sun. Ideally they will also produce some kind of delicious and nutritious fruit for the village as well.

I would also like to help get latrines made throughout the village. Right now a lot of family compounds don’t have a place to go to the bathroom, kind of like if only one house in your neighborhood had a toilet. What winds up happening is that people will just do their business wherever, flies will land on it, when the flies are done there they will then land on your food. I think you can see the issue there.

The real key to everything I try to do here is working closely with people in my village.  As I mentioned before I want the projects I do to continue once I go and the only way to ensure that happens is to work with Senegalese counterparts every step of the way.  When I have pride and take ownership in my work I certainly try to keep in from falling apart, I'm hoping I can work with people like that here.  So there's a bit of an overview of my work here in Senegal.  I hope you have a better idea of what I'm doing here and, as always, keep asking questions!