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