(Nearly) A Month in Review

I know its coming up on a month since my last post...December seems to be flying by! I haven't been up to too much mischief since my last post, I've been tying up some loose ends with my latrine and well cover projects (reports and such) and regrouping for phase two in Mission: Sambande Sanitation which is building a latrine for each family. The local government has been working with our village to restructure and redistribute property and inshallah the work will be finished within the month and we can begin digging pits.

Early in the month I traveled to Thies for the Peace Corps West Africa All Volunteer Conference, which was attended by every volunteer in Senegal as well as representatives from Mali, The Gambia, Benin, Cape Verde and Togo. It was several days of volunteer led presentations and round table discussions. There were opportunities to find out what sort of projects other volunteers are up to, view and learn about appropriate technologies and talk about ideas for cross-sector and cross-country collaboration. I believe there were over 300 volunteers and staff in attendance and a good time was had by all.

After the conference I returned to my village to find a family of mice squatting in my hut, chewing through plastic food containers and pooping in my bed. Since I'm pretty sure squatters rights don't apply in Senegal I waged an all out war to evict them, and so far I have won several battles if not the actual war. After a viciously fought battle over the peanut butter the mice have finally vacated my armoire, only to take up residence in my thatched roof. My biggest problem with the mice isn't so much their living habits as the type of company they tend to attract. Mice like to eat my food, which is annoying, but snakes like to eat the mice, which is a tad bit dangerous. After chasing the fourth snake over 2 feet long out of my hut my family insisted on bringing over the local Imam to bless my room and sprinkle some smelly liquid around the perimeter. I guess I'll find out if it worked when I get back.

With the less than pleasant visitors lingering in my hut I spent as much of last week out of it as possible. I traveled to Fasstoucouleur to help start a new compost pit in the master farmer field, hauled about 20 buckets of manure to my garden to start a moringa intensive bed and plant some bissap, and took a bike ride down to Keur Madialbel to help Jessica paint another mural at the Case de Touts Petits. I also spent a day at the elementary school helping the kids write letters to a French class in Maryland that was kind enough to agree to correspond with us. It was a lot of hard work trying to get the kids to think creatively and even just respond to questions the other students asked. Kids here spend their entire lives in school copying exactly what the teacher writes on the chalkboard and then reciting it over and over again until they can regurgitate it word for word on a test. They are never asked to apply information learned or think critically, so it was a bit frustrating trying to get them to write letters of their own when all they wanted was for me to tell them what to write. It took a long time but most kids seemed to manage to string together a couple of sentences that were somewhat unique, although as soon as I told one student they were doing well everyone else wanted to copy what they had. I find it highly unlikely that every single student in the class likes to play futbal and shell peanuts on the weekend, but at least its a start.

Thursday I headed back to Thies with my neighbor Jen to teach a new generation of volunteers how to paint murals during their In Service Training. I designed some templates and after a short power point presentation we divided them up into two teams and let them take over two of the language classrooms at the training center. Each group did a great job adding their own personal touches to the murals and my hope is that some of them will feel confident enough to go back to their villages and paint everything that stands still long enough. I'm currently spending the night in Kaolack, getting ready to bike back to my village tomorrow afternoon after I run some errands.

I'm planning on staying in my village for Christmas and spending a nice relaxing day at the campement in my road town with a few other volunteers playing board games and having a few drinks. If I don't have the opportunity to post again before then Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!