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!

Meal Time!

I decided to do a topic near and dear to my heart… Food. In this case leaning towards the way family meals work here in Senegal.

In my village there are no grocery stores or any big stores at all, only a few small corner stores about the size of two parking spaces. These corner stores are called boutique and they stock basically everything you need from cleaning supplies to small amounts of food. The trick is that they only stock a small amount of one brand of everything, which is surprisingly regular throughout the country (for example I thing there are only two different brands of tomato paste you can buy in Senegal). Khossanto, being a fairly large village also has a larger boutique where you can buy bulk items, such as your 100ish pound sack of rice that is the base of most of your meals.

Actually though, right now is harvest time, and since literally everyone in Khossanto farms, there is a lot of corn, rice, millet, and peanuts to go around. What still surprises me is that most of the harvest winds up being sold - apparently it is more cost effective to sell your harvest and buy your food. Don’t be mistaken though; we do get to eat some of the harvest mostly as snacks though.

Women do ALL of the cooking; I’ve even been scolded for trying to help because that is for the women to do. The women and girls in my family are cooking for 15 people each meal, so ultimately someone is always tending the food. However, in this case they do get a break – my host father has two wives, which effectively splits the compound into two families. They wind up taking turns with the meals, whoever makes dinner also makes breakfast and lunch the next day. This system works pretty well for my family, but it’s not necessarily the case for everyone. It is not entirely uncommon for girls to be pulled out of school to help their mom’s with the cooking and household chores.

Moving on to the first meal of the day, breakfast is usually worro, which is either a rice or corn based porridge. The corn version comes least often, thankfully, and needs sugar added to it to become bearable. The rice variety is the most common breakfast that is served and I like to add a little sugar and powdered milk to make it so I can eat enough of it. Milk powder can be expensive though for a lot of villagers so most of the time it is just the sugar, there is always money for sugar. My personal favorite breakfast, that comes the least often of all because it is a little more labor intensive, is monoo. Monoo (pictured below) is still porridge but it contains tapioca like balls made with various types of flower. Monoo tends to start off sweeter than the worro so it doesn’t need as much sugar, but it can also take peanut butter really well. Delicious.

Another breakfast treat that is easier to find in the larger villages and cities but a lot more expensive so only for the more well of or on special occasions is the bean sandwich. Bear with me hear, I remember the first time I heard about them but they are really tasty. Basically you take baked beans, drier than you normally see in the US, and put them on a fresh baguette. Sometimes with mayo, or fried up potatoes… it’s mouth watering to me at this point.

Now for lunches and dinners, generally the same meals are served, with lunched tending to be on the lighter side. Except on holidays lunch is the big deal, as in this picture, which is why that bowl is filled with meat instead of the usual basis of rice or couscous. The big bowl of meat is not an everyday thing; meat in and of itself is a rare treat so this was a pretty special holiday. The big bowl itself though IS an everyday thing.

Most families split up based on gender, sometimes a well respected woman will make it into the bowl with the men, but this is not the case in my family. We typically have 4 bowls. Grandma gets her own since she can barely leave her room, and the oldest son also gets his own since he is basically just waiting on a wife before he moves into his own compound. I eat with my host dad and two younger host brothers. The remaining 9 are women, girls, and one very young boy. They all share the biggest bowl, which does not mean the best bowl. The bowl I eat at, with the patriarch, winds up with the most vegetables and the better bits of meat whenever they show up in the meals

In order to not complicate things I bring my own spoon to the bowl, which guarantees my host father to have his own, and sometimes another spoon shows up that the older of my brothers uses. Everyone else uses only his or her right hand to eat (the left is used when going to the bathroom, keep your left had to yourself). The meals themselves are usually rice or couscous based with some kind of sauce leading to a meal that can easily be balled up in one hand and popped into the mouth. In these cases it is very okay to lick your hands – it’s still kind of hard for me to see the person I’m sharing a bowl with do. This is why I make sure to have my own spoon whenever possible. It allows me to control better when I’m getting my food from, and to avoid the areas where the boy with the runny nose has been eating or where my host dad just coughed into the bowl.

On that note, there are in fact table manners… well, bowl manners. Since there are no tables and the only chairs are really stools, bowls are typically set right on the ground. You eat from the area in the bowl directly in front of you, as everyone around you eats you wind up building rice walls separating your spaces. Those walls so eventually get broken down, but you still have your space to take food from and it is bad form to reach across the bowl for things. To accommodate this and meat or veggies that happen to show up are served in the middle of the bowl, so just reach into the middle and break of a chunk to eat. More often than not someone takes on the role of “Bowl Mom”. The Bowl Mom takes on the responsibility of using her (men can do it too, it’s usually the most respected person at the bowl) one hand to cut up whatever is served in the middle of the bowl and divide it up between everyone at the bowl. It is a polite thing for someone tosses a bit of carrot into it, or uses the back of his or her spoon to push some cabbage into your space. It can be considered disrespectful not to accept it, so you have to be careful when something you don’t want to eat shows up.

There's my summary of meal time in Senegal.  I'm sure there are things I have missed so please ask any questions you have and I will try to answer them whenever I can.

Quick Pic Post 4

Bakary Kamara - Khossanto's Blacksmith

Summer Camp… Finally*

It’s been almost a month now since camp ended, but I really want to write about it so please accept my tardiness.

For this installment of the Kedougou Leadership Summer Camp in Dindefello (my first, the thrid in total) everything got bigger. More students, more Senegalese staff, more food… more arguments… one of which was was over the fact that there was less bread than last year. Peace Corps volunteers were not as numerous as in the past and tried to take a back seat as much as possible to allow the Senegalese counterparts to take as much control of the camp as possible. It’s all part of the plan to make this be run completely by the ADDK (Association pour le Développement Durable a Kédougou/Association for the Sustainable Development of Kedougou). They could still use some help with ‘the softer side of camp,’ speaking of which, anyone know of a French version of that “Camp is for the Camper” book?

Peace Corps volunteers took on specific programmatic duties. I was in charge of the Challenge Course, Kellen took care of Sports, Eric had First Aid, Hannah was SeneGAD/AIDS, and Meera did Art and translated for me at the Challenge Course. Then there was Thomas, who planned out and ran the camp while it was happening, he also wound up paying for the camp when funds ran out with the last of his CFA before he returned to America (we plan on doing a little more budget training next year). Basically, camp would not have happened without him. The Senegalese counselors this year were working towards what basically amounts to becoming a licensed counselor. As such there were rules that kept us from being able to work with specific counselors and train them on specific areas of camp as well.

Challenge Course – Step 1: find new challenges for second and third year campers. I thought I had that taken care of based on the resources I saw from last year’s camp. I was wrong, they had all done everything I planned and prepared for. Now I’m working on grouping challenges so that there is something new to be done each year as well as the good repeats of things that are always different. Step 2: introduce challenge to campers. Simple… except their first languages are Puular OR Malinké, not both, luckily by middle school everyone can speak French which is what we tried to run the camp in as much as possible. My French, however, is limited to being a customer or responding to yes or no type questions. I can understand quite a bit of what I hear, I just have a lot of trouble producing French on my own. This is why I stole Meera (who has never done a Challenge Course) as my translator, we like to think of it as a Little Mermaid type situation. Step 3: TCCCT. This is where Meera came in even handier and the Little Mermaid of the situation really came out. The discussion after a challenge is completed, or not completed, is really the point of doing a Challenge Course. That’s where everyone learns to work as a team and all the joys I get out of doing a Challenge Course become obvious. Pretty quickly the campers figured out that we were looking for certain key words – Trust, Communication, Cooperation, and Creating Thinking (TCCCT). Once they figured them out they would just say them in the discussion times. This is where it’s good to have some experience with it, you need to ask the right questions at the right times to lead the discussion in the right direction, and to know when to back down if the group is starting to get frustrated. I by no means am an expert, but I have had experience. By the end of the two weeks I loved seeing not only the campers getting what we were talking about, but also the way Meera wound up being able to just run with the discussion on her own. This is why I do what I do.

Here’s how it worked, towards the end of the challenge I would give Meera (in English) a few questions to ask and points I thought they should get out of the discussion. She would start the discussion with all that in mind and I would just listen to what the campers were saying, most of which I was able to understand or at least get the gist of. If there was something I wanted to ask, or a point I thought they should discuss more I would just say it when I normally would, in English, to Meera, who would then say it in French. I imagine this was confusing for anyone watching since I wasn’t having anyone translate to me, but still able to guide the discussion. It’s also a matter of being able to keep the right pacing of the discussion otherwise you loose momentum fast and Meera was really helpful for that. My French comes out a lot slower – at one point when I was guiding a sub-group of campers on my own I blanked on the word for hand. After a long pause I held up my own hand, started at it, and said, “Ça c’est quoi?” (What is this?). I don’t imagine I had much credibility on my own after that.

Creative Thinking proved to be the most challenging concept for the campers throughout camp. It makes sense since (haha) in many cases it was literally beaten out of them in school. The Senegalese school system is heaving on the memorization of things, in order to be successful in school you need to know things verbatim. In this case creative thinking is almost a disadvantage. It was really interesting to see how readily the second and third years got into it and to compare that to how much the first years struggled when we did not provide a single correct answer. Again, at the end of the two weeks the change was apparent in all of the campers.

Aside: Dear Campy Friends, I have a challenge for you over the next year. I need activities that encourage/teach Sportsmanship. Tons of cheating along with sore losers and winners. We stopped things quite often to explain that it is a whole lot more fun for everyone if you follow the rules, and in the case of the challenge course when you start cheating you lose the whole point of doing it. It’s the challenges that you build off of and learn from. I’m talking really basic stuff here; the concept of sportsmanship just really isn’t there. GO! Bonus points if it’s in French and English.

So a quick wrap up on camp as a whole. I would say this year was filled with growing pains, next year it should have settled into it’s new scale and run a lot smoother. Plus, with all the certified counselors we won’t have to have the outside influence that wound up instigating a lot of the tension. The wonderful bureaucracy of it all should be simplified (see flowchart pictured here).

Unfortunately I have to end on a low note. About two weeks after camp ended, leadership camp, one of the male counselors and a couple of his friends took a moto ride out to a village. There they went to the house of one of the female campers so he could ask her parents for her hand in marriage. Reminder, these are middle school students. Also keep in mind that this isn’t as a whole culturally unacceptable; the younger generations and the more educated seem to prefer waiting until the girl is out of school until she gets married off.

Just to twist that knife in there a little more it is worth noting that this particular counselor is also a teacher. Meaning he works with kids this age all the time, and once she pops out a kid he’s allowed to take a second wife. Now, the parents do need to approve in order for this to happen. We need to be honest here; she’s a village girl being proposed to by a teacher from the city. This is a huge get for the family, not only does she get out of the village and into the city, but she also has a husband with a steady job. It’s unlikely that they will deny this union. Come to leadership camp… expand your horizons, open yourself up to new possibilities… yeah.

Jurassic Park - or - The Monkey Stole My Things*

Since September 15th I’ve been helping out with a leadership summer camp for the region of Kedougou. It will be ending on the 30th, and I’ll save most of the details for after that - for now I want to talk a little about Movie Night and living arrangements.

For the first of the two scheduled movie nights we chose Jurassic Park (The plan for the second one is Finding Nemo, but there is little respect for the Chrono so who knows if that will happen). We decided an action movie translates best across language barriers, we showed the French dub but French is still at best a second language for everyone. We also wanted to blow their minds with a movie about dinosaurs. Minds weren’t blown in quite the way we all hoped for but it was still a lot of fun to watch the movie.

I was most looking forward to the big T-Rex scene and seeing their reaction to that. I was expecting a lot more on the fear spectrum of reactions, but they seemed to have a far better grasp of just how pretend the scene was than I had hoped for. Another volunteer / my roommate for the two weeks and I talked about it afterwards and we came up with a couple ideas on why. First, when we first saw Jurassic Park we were younger than these campers are. Second, a lot of these campers have already seen action flicks on TV at some point and have been exposed to CGI so it’s not a new thing.

Everyone was still definitely entertained and on the edge of their seats for the scene. I could feel the tension in the room rise as everyone’s eyes remained glued to the projection. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t the silent type of tension, it was the yell at the characters for doing something stupid type of tension… and as things got more intense the comments became more and more urgent. It was really fun to watch; I mean, I love that scene but I was having so much more fun watching the audience for most of it. It was most clear just how tense everyone was during the actions scenes when they ended. The collective sigh of relief was audible and followed by a discussion of what just happened with your neighbors. Unfortunately there was a lot of whispering at once and in a bunch of languages that it was tough for me to pull out any good comments.

A lot of joy was gleaned from watching people get hurt, and they loved watching the “fat one” do pretty much anything - plus at the end of his arch he gets hurt too, what more could you want? All in all everyone seemed to follow the movie really well, and there was a surprising amount that was relatable to life in Senegal. Raptors eat cows fast, the T-Rex gets a goat (both animals are EVERYWHERE), and all lizards must die. Speaking of which, the scene where Alan Grant and the kids spend the night in the tree and the Brontosaurus comes over to say hi turned into the moment that made me laugh the most thanks to someone’s reaction. There is the line in the movie that compares them to “big cows” which was apparently lost on one of the Senegalese counselors (kind-of counselor, her role really was unclear). She started to scold them quite loudly as soon as they started petting them. She had the full “whatever, fine, don’t listen to me” reaction too and threw up her arms in disgust.

It was really great to people watch the whole time. Now it’s time for the Rocky and Bullwinkle style chang up. During camp the Peace Corps Volunteers involved stayed at a different place than all the campers. I got to share a hut with Kellen, my closest neighbor actually; however, there’s a small debate as to wether or not our hut can actually be considered as suck. It was basically a box made out of bamboo poles with a thatched roof on sticks. The thatch roof was the most weather proof part of the hut and at least bigger animals wouldn’t be able to make it into the hut. We came to the conclusion that a good tent could probably provide better protection from the elements the night of the big storm when the grass mats lining the walls nearly blew down onto us. Kellen may have made a hole on the back porch on the way to take a bucket bath one day, but the beds are REALLY comfortable. Next to our hut there was a monkey leashed to a tree, apparently it’s the more temperamental of the pair of pet monkeys that lived there (the other being left to roam free and apparently live under our hut). Now, I had been leaving my toothpaste out back by the sink so that we could brush out teeth there when it went missing one day. I will admit that I laughed off Kellen’s suggestion that the monkey had taken it for a few days until the tube was found in the Lost and Found with monkey bite marks on it. That was just funny, no harm done, first offense, all the toothpaste was still there, and I was basically inviting it to get taken by leaving it out.

The Second offense however… the cursed little monkey came into our hut and stole out corn! We had the back door open, and a couple ears of corn left on a small table that we were planning on roasting up that night. We were all hanging out having a Coke/Fanta break when Kellen had to get something from our hut. He came back with two empty ears of corn in his hands, “The monkeys ate our corn.” Apparently he caught them and his mouth dropped open, a motion the monkeys decided the mimic as they stood over their prizes. If you can’t tell I have a very specific picture of how this all went down in my head. It was a traumatic experience, I was looking forward to making someone roast that corn for me so I could have a tasty night time snack.

Pure devastation when the evening rolled around and I wanted to have a snack. Stupid Monkey.

Korité*

Well, I made a big deal out of staying in site for this party, I should probably let you know what happend on Korité (Friday 10 September).

I woke up early knowing that they probably let me do any work on this party day and tried to quietly move my newly aquired soil under my shade structure before breakfast. After I was successful with that task I had breakfast as usual, the went out to sit with my host father, Niama. Since the night before he had shaved his head for the big day, in doing so I had some trouble recognizing him at first since he looked significantly younger. While sitting there with him trying to get an idea of what was in store for me today I became very self conscious about my personal “challenge” of not shaving for the month of Ramadan. So after some Nescafe I excused myself to take a shower. Not only did I scrub extra hard with my loofa as instructed by my host sister but I also treated myself to the free shampoo sample that came with my bar of soap a few months ago (I was saving it for a special occasion). But this all started with the shave. Using good ol’ Dr. Bronner as my shaving cream and my hands being the closest thing I had to a mirror I managed to get rid of all my facial hair with no major issues.

After the shower I fumbled around in my hut for a while because I didn’t want to get all fancied up too early. In the process of getting ready slowly the neighbor boy burst into my room catching me in my boxers; he reacted as though I was naked and basically ran away. I thought it was hilarious because he has seen me in my pajama shorts which were basically the same and he never had a problem there, I will admit, these particular boxers are in the flesh color tone range. After that excitement I decided to put on my fancy pants but procrastinated more on getting my shirt on to complete the outfit. It didn’t take too long for one of my host mothers to stop by and tell me that everyone is going to Mosque RIGHT NOW. So I threw on the top, got out the door, did a little modeling for the family, and was led to the mosque by my oldest brother.

I wasn’t fasting for Ramadan (my family just keeps giving me food, I can’t let it go to waste!) and I never pretended to be Muslim so I was expecting a place in the back of the mosque. Nope, once we go there I was given a spot just a few rows from the front next to the youngest son of the Village Chief. Not only that but one of the old men around me gave me his prayer mat to use for the service and there was another man who gave me his prayer beads at one point and tried to teach me how to use them. It was pretty nice of them, and that prayer mat is one of the softest things I have touched in country. The service - like most religious services it’s fairly easy to follow along and eventually you’ll find the rhythm. In this case there was a definite of words that would make everyone change positions (stand, bow, kneel, touch forehead to ground, etc). Every once and a while we got to do my favorite one (I wish I could take credit for this explanation, but I heard it from someone, I just don’t remember who) which consists of cupping your hands in front of your face, saying your prayers into the cup you just made, and finally washing your face with your prayers. The mosque itself was not the grand mosque that you picture, it was more comparable to a large garage and was ridiculously hot. One man too it upon himself to stand next to the man leading the service and fan him the entire time, another man took it upon himself to photograph the entire service in the most intrusive ways possible. I’m sure he got some great shots, but boy did he know how to get in the way and be distracting.

After Mosque I was taken to my community counterpart’s family compound by the neighbor who had caught me in my underwear earlier. I met some more people there who had a lot to say about Famara and not as much to say about Shekho. It was a pretty food time, not to mention the tastiest meat sandwich I’ve ever had in Senegal, I dodn’t know this was even possible. The meat was cooked well, seasoned right, and actually actually meat - not organs. Where did these spices even come from? Amazing.

Thus begins the day of food. Well cooked, good cuts of beef were all over the place (when I say good cuts I’m not necessarily talking about anything you’d find in a grocery store, it’s probably still pretty close to the scraps by American standards). Three lunches and a bunch of snack times later I needed to take a break and have a little gemalschgaming - even laying down was painful for me I was so full. A gemalschgaming, by the way, in this case means a walk to aid digestion and it is another inside joke, sorry (Thank you Ali and the Engle family for this word that has filled a void I didn’t realize existed). This walk aligned nicely with a tradition of going around and greeting everyone else in the village. What I was not warned about though is that children expect gifts/money when they greet you. I didn’t plan out my month at site very well and was down to 475cfa of cash in my possesion… 400 of those cfa were reserved for the purchase of bread in the morning so I would survive my bike back into Kedougou. The remaining 75cfa just wasn’t worth giving to only one kid, and besides I also wanted to keep it in case I needed to buy a sac of water on the way. There were a lot of disappointed children who greeted me on that walk. I’m sure they assumed I had money but was just withholding it, but it is considered better to lie in a situation like that and say ‘I have nothing’ than to say ‘I’m not going to give you anything’.

The gemalschgaming was a pretty great time - more people know who I am (and that I’m not Shekho), I got another (less sincere) offer of Malinké lessons for English ones, and another visit to Lengkhoxoto. That was the highlight for me, there were only 2 men sitting under the tree at the time, but after a short talk and an explanation of why I was walking around they wound up thanking me for stopping by. It felt really good. From Lengkhoxhoto I headed to the blacksmith’s place. His name is Bakary Kamara and has been one of the most understanding people in Khossanto when it comes to my language acquisition and the what I’m going through in general.

I wound up greeting every person notable to me during that gemalschgaming and I wasn’t even trying. I accidentally did what I was supposed to do because I ate far too much. I left my village the next morning very happy with the status of everything, looking forward to meeting the new volunteers who were coming to visit, and just about bouncing off the walls for summer camp to happen.

The Neighbors
(some of them - the boy on the left is my buddy that
saw me in my undies)