On feeling like a fool and a pig: Day 2 at site*

I woke up today without needing to be woken up! I even managed to get a little privacy from the family’s latrine by tying my sheet to my “shade structure.”

Now, Clarification on that. Yesterday I was still asleep by the time the sun had fully risen, this is not how it works apparently because my host dad decided to wake me up. Next clarification, there is a section of fence missing that closes of my back yard from the rest of the compound. This particular missing section also happens to block my view of the family latrine from my outside bedding spot. I get my own latrine in my backyard by policy, which is really nice for sanitary reasons (although I suspect someone used mine last night). Final bit of clarification, yes, I do sleep outside. The inside of my hut has been maintaining a fairly constant 100ºF (according to the thermometer hanging from the wall, so this is really a more accurate description of the wall’s temperature), as such I have spent the last 2 nights sleeping under my “shade structure.” The quotes are because it really provides more of a Shade Grid since it is only the bamboo framing that will one day hold a roof and provide me with shade and rain blocking. The fact that it doesn’t provide shade doesn’t matter at night, and I’m willing to risk getting wet to sleep where it is cooler. I still wake up sweating though. Anyway, last night, I hung up my bed sheet to act as a temporary fence so I don’t have to worry about peeking in on anyone using the latrine.

The day started slow, my host dad disappeared early; apparently running off to Mali, possibly for a funeral. So helpful neighbor boy came over and tried talking to me in French only (if you aren’t aware, my French is very limited to survival phrases). After a while he pulled me over to his family compound, I greeted his mother and the woman who was visiting, then he and I started to pull apart mango pits to get at the seeds so I could plant them. (only 485 to go). After that I decided to take a walk over to the school to check on the status of the well there and if I might be able to plant some trees there.

Still needs to be dug deeper, the pile of rocks behind throws me off every time.

On my way there I greeted everyone I passed, which led to only one attempted conversation… luckily I had prepared by reviewing the word for ‘well’ and have already mastered the verb ‘to go’ in Malinke (both slightly different than Mandinka).

Lunch was plain rice with peanut sauce - tasty, but feels like a side more than a meal. Since dad was apparently in Mali it was up to me as the oldest to do the work. I waved this duty on to my oldest brother (about 10 years old) since this was only my second lunch with the family. So he split the rice in half and poured the sauce onto the half that remained in the bowl and we started eating. We finished the first half and my youngest brother left the bowl. We’re down to me and the oldest brother… he reloads the bowl with the second half of rice, peanut sauce is poured on, and we continue eating. Well, I continue eating. He took one handful and left the bowl for me, so I at it, all of it. I’ll be honest, it was only difficult for my last two spoons full.

After lunch I decided it was time for another walk… to the hill with the supposed cell phone reception (reso). I found the hill, not the reso. Making my mother proud I decided not to double back and took a new route home. I made an effort to take a few of the conversations past greetings a few times. There were 2 main themes to these conversations 1) I am not the volunteer I replaced, he is in Kedougou; 2) I only speak a little French, but I am studying Malinke (little by little).

This endeavor made me simultaneously proud of my efforts and embarrassed of my language skills. Case in point was the teenage girl helping to make dinner with her family saying in broken English, “You do not like the English do you?” I’m sure this was her saying that I don’t speak English… well I do, I just can’t understand mumbles, sorry.

So, I returned home feeling proud and inadequate so I poured water over my head to cool off.

FUN NEW PRACTICE: Bucket Bathe into a benwar (big bucket) and use that to water the plants in my backyard! **I’m pretty sure one is a Baobob!

Then it was dinner time: millet couscous with leaf sauce. SO tasty that even now that host dad is back I decided to continue eating twice as long as everyone else. It’s good, because then I feel like a pig for eating a lot at the same time as I lose all kinds of weight because I have no protein in my diet.

The End of Homestay*

Remember how on Christmas Eve you would get so excited that you couldn't sleep and Mom and Dad would remind you that, "The sooner you fall asleep, the sooner you will wake up and it will be Christmas Day!" Well it works in the other direction too.  I am currently doing everything I can so I don't have to go to sleep and wake up tomorrow and leave my new family.

It is my opinion that Peace Corps is like a 27(ish) month lifetime.  Right now, I'm getting ready to leave for college.  Okay, I have to put another clause on this 'lifetime'; it's more at the turn of the century, when leaving for college didn't necessarily mean you were coming back.

I've been living with the Mandian family in MBour for the past 2 months.  They have fed me, taught me to talk, taught me how to get around on my own, even clothed me.  What it comes down to is I love these guys, and owe them the most for helping to be able to integrate into this new society.  I might not be able to speak the same language as everyone in the house, or even be able to carry on a conversation with the ones who speak my language.  I'm going be near tears all day tomorrow, I was having trouble today when my LCF left the city.  It made it all too real.

So not only am I leaving the family I love and the city I've grown up in to go to a village where they don't speak the exact same language I've been learning... I'm also leaving the Mandikol.  The three of us have gone through pretty much all of this together, and I think the rest of our stage would agree that we are quite possibly the closest language group here (I swear we aren't exclusive, it's just that no one knows our language).

I'm leaving my family behind, my friends are splitting up, and I'm starting something completely different.  Yup, I'm off to college.  Graduation and the "Real World" coming up after IST (In Service Training) in mid July.

But, for all of my sadness and worry about the changes about to happen, I have the world to look forward to!  I'm about to get started on what I actually came to the country for.  I can look back to my post on Village Visit to get a refresher on what I have to be excited about.  It's all about keeping a handle on the past but always looking to the future.

Happy

To Host a Wrestling Tournament*

Wrestling in Senegal is a pretty big deal. According to my LCF (Language Teacher) Aziz it has gotten more popular than Soccer in Senegal.

TANGENT: Aziz also told us a little story about why this is a good thing. About 5 years ago mugging was a big problem in the cities of Senegal. Apparently, as wrestling has gained popularity all the muggers became wrestlers. More money in a legitimate way, kind of a win win situation.

Spence’s Senegalese father, Lamine, was a wrestler back in the day, and still loves it. He seems to be grooming his son to be good too. So as a gift to his Tubabs (white people), Lamine organized a Wrestling tournament for us in front of his house. All we had to do was pay 3000cfa (pronounce cfa “say-faa”). This seemed reasonable to us, so we started calling the other trainees in our city. To most of them this price seemed unreasonable apparently, and since we didn’t want to have to pay more we extended our search the trainees of a neighboring village. They were all for the wrestling tournament so it was still on! Which was good, since in a true Senegalese fashion, we didn’t get this taken care of until the morning of. We were a little worried, but it turned out AMAZING!

It started off with the little kids wrestling, and little kids doing anything like that is just cute. As the evening wore on the age of the participants increased and the crowd got bigger, louder, and closer. As with any amateur sporting event there were more pauses than one would prefer to see, but it was none the less a great time. It started to get intense when the oldest group was going (I think age maxed out at 17ish).

Lamine’s son, Ismaela, won his bracket of the tournament, which gave him bragging rights that he tried his best to keep under control. At first it was just confusing to watch and just looked like chaos, but as the evening moved forward it became clearer what was happening and significantly more fun to watch. A little more details on the wrestling itself now.

Senegalese wrestling is best described, in my opinion, as a mix between WWE style wrestling and Sumo. Probably a little dull by American standards. The wrestlers basically bat at each other like cats for a few minutes before grabbing one another by their diapers and trying to get the other's torso/head to hit the ground before theirs. The action usually lasts a few seconds.

Back on April 4th (Senegal’s Independence Day) there was a HUGE match between and wrestler names Yekini and one named Tyson (Yes, as in Mike Tyson). The story as I know it is that Tyson was the former champion but moved to America for a few years and this was his big return match. There were some fans rooting for Tyson, but it seemed like most people were rooting for Yekini with all their Senegalese pride. It was a long build up, felt a little like watching the Super Bowl on TV, except that when Yekenni finally won you could hear the city EXPLODE with excitement. People literally flooded the streets. It was a fairly exciting match too, long, and it was close, but Tyson’s head hit the ground just before Yekini’s shoulder did.  With that the party began.

Plans and Adjustments

I'm going to try to be a responsible blogger now, I promise.  Well, semi responsible... my plan, since I don't have as ready access to the internet as bloogging responsibly requires I am going to write notes to myself on what I'm going to blog, transcribe them to the blog, and adjust the posting time to when I actually put my thoughts onto paper as opposed to when I actually put them online.  I'll even make special notation... so if you see a * at the end of a post's title it means that I wrote it on paper before it made it online.

This is all a means to make it so that I am more likely to write things up while they are fresh and therefore make this more interesting for you to read.  This is an issue for me, I'm not to most consistent when it comes to things like this.

Anyway, in order to add to the confusion, I am now going to write my first such post, which when looking at the blog will appear to be older - but I'm actually going to write it right now, it's like I'm a time traveler.

Keep in mind too, that while I wrote most of this I was sitting in a hammock quite similar to the one pictured (it is the one pictured, I took this picture then started writing).

Village Visits*

I just made it into Khossanto a few hours ago, this village will become my home for two years about a month from now. It's a pretty big deal for me to be visiting, but I have to start from the beginning - Site Announcements!

There is a basketball court (well, a half court) that has a map of Senegal painted on it. For site announcements we were all lined up around the border... blindfolded. They gave us a spiel about not peaking and ruining the surprise or else we would be sent back to the US... blah, blah, blah. So I'm standing there on the Northern border of Senegal, in Mauritania, all the voices next to me are disappearing, and I pick up a conversation with the one guy still next to me on the border.

"David?" says an American man's voice in front of me. I've never met any of the American guys placing us on the map... weird.

"My name is David."

"I know where you go," my hand is grabbed and I am lead off through all of Senegal

I wound up where I expected based on the local language I was learning (Mandinka), the far away land of Kedougou in Sountheastern Senegal. I was, however, surprised to see Malinke listed as the village language in the paperwork we were given. We had been warned from the start that we would be speaking Jaxanke and not Mandinka from the get go; had it not been for other volunteers I would have not even been aware that Malinke existed. "But the are all basically dialects of each other anyway, it's easy."

Now, back to what is happening now - the Village Visit, more commonly called Demyst by the volunteers, short for Demystification:

Mandinka ≠ Milinke. I'll save final judgement for once I've been there for a while, but for now I'm pretending Malinke doesn't exist so that I pass all my Mandinka tests. I'll leave it at that.

I am about to go to bed for the first night at my new site, although I will be leaving in a couple days. I get to spend the time with my ancien (the PCV I will be replacing) to really get a feel for the village and what it is like to be a full fledged volunteer. His name is David, he likes to bike... a lot of my friends would also say these things to describe me. Funny how the Peace Corps works, or maybe Davids are just awesome like that. He has a blog which has earned a link in the sidebar. He's kind of a strange case in that he has only been at site for a year - but he has his work reasons, and I'll let you find that out from him.

We took a walk around Khossanto this evening, and it is going to be great (especially once I speak the right language).  First we headed over to the Women's Group's gardens, but on the way we were pulled off the trail to check out the "well" that had been dug out to provide water for the cattle. The "well" was a dry hole in the ground that had no way for any cow to get at any sort of water. My ancien explained that there is another well that the village normally uses to get water for the cattle, but it has been broken for a while now. Cows have started dying due to lack of water, this can be a major thing because they use their cattle as their banks. They really have no place to store any money, so when they come into a little wealth they buy a cow. So some cows dying can be a little like being thrown into a major depression.

Then our stroll took us through what I am currently calling The Mango Orchard. Gloriously massive Mango trees shading off this entire valley, making it significantly cooler there. David says it's a good place to spend an afternoon. Apparently when the mangoes are falling the man who owns the trees will give some to you - not to mention that he is okay with people utilizing their shade.

Wo kola (Mandinka, probably not Malinke), we made it to the gardens. The women's group plots were rectangles of rather recently harvested crops ready to be replanted, that is assuming another harvest can come in before the rainy season comes and washes it all away. Did I mention that there is a river that can take over the road for short periods of time during the rainy season?

From there we went over to my future family's garden and checked that out... and sampled some tasty tasty carrots. That's when we decided to talk about what I wanted to do with my service and what things interested me. It was a little difficult for me to do, but talking to him about it really helped me put certain things in order and start thinking about these whole two years in a different light. I have purposely kept my hopes and desires open so that I can adapt them to what needs to happen in my community. Obviously there are triggers that would push me in certain directions, I am an Environmental Education volunteer after all, which is what this community wants.

That conversation put us on the path of the Collège (= Middle School) both literally and figuratively.  A couple tangents on the Universal Nut Sheller project of his (Links 1 & 2), and the hill with Tigo cell phone reception (PCVs get Orange phones), but let's not get distracted from my big picture.  The three month long construction of the Collège is now in its 18th or so month and is at a bit of a stand still due to funding. I guess some inspectors came in and pointed out that the materials were basically useless (i.e. too much sand in the cement). We stepped into one of the classrooms, it's just over a year old and already falling apart.  So there it stands, 4 or so classrooms being used with three times that waiting for their finishing touches.

This place is absolutely ripe for projects for me to get a hold of, but I have to wait until it gets finished.  Plenty of blank walls looking for murals, no gardens, and no environmental group (heavily dependent on students being there). Oh yeah, also there is no water source at the school either.  They have douches (bathrooms / pit squat-toilettes) but no wells for water.

Now I just have to deal with another month of training before I can get to work on one or all of these... or some completely different project.

Quick Pic Post 1

Aarona, My little homestay brother.

A little backwards...

So, all I want to do is type about what I've been doing for the past few weeks, but I promised myself that I would finish the story up until leaving the US before I went forward anymore. Here goes, one last lead up post, then the good stuff.

So after the interview I was made to wait a whole 3 or 4 weeks (which from what I hear is pretty fast for the average) until I got the call back from the recruiter. We chatted for a bit, I didn't come up with any questions, so he went ahead and told me that he felt "comfortable nominating you for a position in Sub-Saharan Africa. It's French speaking and would be leaving in June."

Now, if you are paying attention you will notice that it is currently April (before June) and I am already in Senegal. More on that later.

With the nomination came a packet in the mail with all kinds of paperwork for me to fill out, the most annoying of which were the medical forms. So that took me a good month of running around to get tests, fill out paperwork, dental things. It was a big to do that needed to get done right the first time otherwise everything was going to get pushed back on me and I wouldn't be leaving in June. I was told that the key to making this happen was to be proactive about it and make sure that the right tests are getting done. This is definitely the case, there were several instances that I had to ask a couple extra questions to get the right tests done in order to make everything get done right.

That took me until Thanksgiving to get it all sent back in to the Peace Corps, and the the waiting game began. Turns out that's a pretty big thing in PC, hurry up and wait. Anyway, there is this online system they have set up that gives you updates whenever there are updates to your application. Pretty quickly everything went through except my Medical - I was stoked about this because I was most worried about my Dental papers getting okayed.

It was the start of December and everything was okayed except Medical.

     Graduation.

          New Years.

               Nothing.

My brother, Adam, has moved out to Seattle and had begun settling in, and I'm still waiting for this one last okay from the Peace Corps. I pretty much constantly had ants in my pants. For the record if this all doesn't get okayed on the first time through I wont have a chance of leaving in June and my paperwork get put back on the bottom of the pile for getting okayed. All of this, plus the fact that this is the Peace Corps makes it a pretty big deal for me.

So, towards the end of January there was a family crisis which brought me home from Point, and the next day my brother home from Seattle. I went to pick him up from the Milwaukee airport and on the way back we stopped in Germantown for food. Neither of us had eaten since breakfast and it was after 3 already, so we sat down and had ourselves some Chinese cuisine. We finished and were just about to pay when my phone rang - I’m in the process of applying for a ton of jobs so I answered it and ditched him with the bill. Kidding, I left him money since I was planning on paying for food anyway.

As you may have figured out by now, it was none other than the Peace Corps on the phone! It was a woman in Washington DC who just wanted to chat for a little bit if I had time.  I said that I had the time, so I went out into my car in the parking lot to chat with her. After paying Adam came out to the car as well and was content sitting there listening in on the conversation. She was telling me about the fact that the position I had been nominated for no longer existed (my assumption is that there was political unrest wherever that was) and Adam's phone rang too. He was working on finding a job too, and after a long conversation was able to set up an interview (that didn't work out, but he did get a job now!). He was off the phone just in time for PC woman to offer me a position starting in MARCH, which I said okay to with the knowledge that I would be getting a packet in the mail to review before I would actually accept.

This is the Peace Corps... I had been working on this for over a year at this point, I wasn't going to say no to anything they offered me right away.  She did sense the hesitation in my voice and asked me about it, I reassured her that it was just shock for the most part because I was expecting that if the date were to move at all that it would get pushed later, not to mention the family things.

Okay, I'm done with the stuff that happened in the US and am ready for the updates of life in Senegal.  I know there is a bit of a gap in the story, but I'm sure you can fill in the blanks at this point.