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