Endurance

This is how an expert sufferer looks with
a 102 degree fever on a 110 degree day.

 If there's one thing Peace Corps has taught me these last sixteen months its perseverance. How to put up with inconvenience, deal with difficulty, and keep going despite any amount of pain, discomfort or misery. To accept any circumstance and continue on regardless, because most of the time that's the only option I've got. I never would have made it up Kilimanjaro without these lessons. I don't know what I would have done (sat down and cried?), but I wouldn't have been able to put one foot in front of the other and continued to the summit between bouts vomiting and diarrhea without the endurance I've learned here. I can endure a double-ended intestinal assault on a 60k bike ride, 8 hours in a cramped vehicle suffocating in gasoline fumes and body odor, or an infestation of spiders (or earwigs, or biting ants, or scorpions), with a resilience I never thought I possessed. In short, I am an expert in misery. Acknowledging it, coping with it, moving through it and accepting it as an inevitable part of life in Africa. Thats not to say its always easy, or that all suffering is created equal. For instance, I find it much easier to spend a rainy night squatting over a hole in the ground expelling all the fires of hell than to endure the millionth "xonknop" (red-ears) from a stranger in a country where I'm trying so hard to fit in. Not all trials are handled in equal grace, but none the less they are handled. It is somehow comforting to think, during a bout of illness or a period of abuse, that "this isn't the worst thing that will happen to me in Senegal." I don't know why that helps, but it does. I can't possibly allow myself to go to pieces over something if I know there is worse yet to come. What doesn't kill me only makes me stronger, and Senegal hasn't managed to kill me yet!
 

Shhh, Be Vewy Vewy Quiet, I'm Raising Rabbits

Aput and Xa Ju'ua (lunch and dinner), my breeding pair

How often do you eat meat? Assuming you're not a vegetarian, I'm willing to bet the number is somewhere around 7 times a week...an average of one meal containing animal protein per day. In my village, as in most villages across Senegal, we're lucky to get meat once a month, and that would be one chicken shared between 9 adults and 12 children. A lack of protein in the diet isn't as big of a threat to people's health here as a lack of vegetables since most of our meals contain dried fish (literally just a fish, dried to leather in the sun), but it is certainly a threat to my tastebuds. That's where Bugs Bunny comes in.

The hutch built by my counterpart and I.
I was feeling patriotic on painting day!

I had been toying with the idea of raising chickens, but I couldn't stand the thought of adding more noise to the cacophony that is our compound. My newest rule is "if it crows, it goes," one feathered 4am alarm clock is enough. After rejecting the roosters I turned my mind toward other readily-available sources of protein. Cows are strictly for Pulaars to herd. Goats and sheep require too much space and food, and as I've been waging war against my aunt's goats for almost a year trying to keep them out of my garden I didn't fancy adding to their ranks. Rats and monitor lizards are another option here if you're a good trapper, but although I've got a seemingly endless supply of rats invading my yard and hut I don't fancy trying to cultivate them and monitor lizards, although delicious, don't provide much meat. That leaves just one option: Rabbits. The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. Rabbits don't moo, crow, bray or baa. They are one of the most efficient animals and produce an astounding amount of meat for every kilogram of fodder. Rabbits aren't picky eaters and its easy to find something for them to eat year round, even in the desert. Best of all they reproduce like, well, like rabbits! Two rabbits today quickly becomes twenty rabbits tomorrow, and so for a small initial investment I have guaranteed myself a steady supply of meat for the rest of my service. If things go really well I might even consider writing a grant to extend rabbit husbandry to other compounds in the village. We'll see how it goes.

 

My brother Samba with Xa ju'ua

Water, Water, Everywhere and Not a Bite to Eat

Now that the rains are is in full swing my family and I are spending a lot of time in the fields plowing, planting, and weeding our crops; millet, peanuts and corn. Rainy season can be a bit misleading, because despite being surrounded by green lush crops, we've been in "starving season" for over a month now. Its the awkward time before the harvest when food from last year is running low and the price of vegetables skyrockets. Fortunately much of starving season overlaps with Ramadan so we're fasting from sunrise to sunset anyway and the lack of food is less noticeable. Our family has been able to supplement our dinners with vegetables from my garden so we're getting a few more vitamins than most, but the extra farm work combined with fasting food and water for 15 hours a day make August a tough month for everyone.

Oumi taking a break from weeding the field

Since the beginning of Ramadan, the farming work falls
heavily on the shoulders of the kids who are too young to be fasting

Modu leads the donkey pulling the plow

Aladji putting the plow away

A monitor lizard caught in my garden.
Lucky for him we're all fasting for Ramadan
or else he would have been eaten

My brothers displaying the first eggplant
harvested from my garden

My rainy season garden in its early stage:
tomatoes, eggplant, basil, beans, corn,
sweet potato, mint, okra, green pepper

My eggplant had twins!

African lightning storm...natures television