Goza Got Married

The beautiful bride

On a rather belated note, my neighbor got "married" at the beginning of February to her American boyfriend who was visiting on vacation. Since it wasn't a real wedding they skipped right past all of the religious ceremonies and just stuck with the best part...the reception. About 30 volunteers from all over the country converged on her town in our Senegalese finest with gifts of live poultry, boiled eggs and nesting bowls full of MSG powder. Everything required to make a good party truly great, including $2 wine sipped surreptitiously out of empty Coke cans (inspired by our favorite show, Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia). Kourtney, Ari and I served as the bridesmaids, our only job being to look fabulous in our chiquita banana themed completes. A $100 sheep was slaughtered and amazing ceeb u jen (rice and fish) was served for lunch along with hard boiled eggs and tomatoes stuffed with mayonnaise. The event was an amazing mash-up of Senegalese and American traditions...Senegalese ataya (tea) + American alcohol, Senegalese drumming + American gangster rap, and Senegalese dancing + a surprise rendition of Hava Nagila (Jessica's half Jewish) that terrified Jessica and confused the heck out of the Senegalese guests (see video). It was certainly the best non-wedding I've ever been a part of.

Chiquita Banana Bridesmaids (note the wine in a can)

Lunch for 40...rice and sheep

Waste not want not...

Cooking with Gas! I Mean, MILLET!

Old cooking method and new cooking method, side by side

One of my favorite weekly activities in the village is going out to the "forest" with my mom to collect wood for the cooking fire. It gives me an opportunity to get away from the utter lack of privacy associated with communal living and spend some quality time with my mom. We get up early, strap on our machetes, fill our water bottles at the well and make the 2k hike out to the nearest stand of thorny trees to try and scavenge some wood. Sometimes we spend the morning shaving thorns off of discarded branches left behind by the local charcoal makers...other times we spend half an hour chopping down a tree and processing it into smaller pieces with just our dull machetes. In the early afternoon we tie up our bundles of wood with scraps of fabric and hoist them up onto our heads for the walk home. For me, this operation is still a novelty. A chance to get in some good physical activity and meditate on the irony of being an "environmental" volunteer who has certainly cut down more trees than she's planted. For my mom, though, spending upwards of 6 hours a week just trying to provide fuel for the cook fire isn't a game...its a life sentence to hard labor.

Packing the stove with millet chaff

As I was preparing to leave Sambande, I just couldn't stop thinking about my poor mom having to make that trip out there every week by herself. So when I visited my neighbor Jessica in her town and found out that her sisters cook lunch every day with just one stick thanks to a locally produced stove, I jumped at the chance to get one for my mom. Reducing the amount of fuel needed to cook lunch from 5 sticks to just one will dramatically cut down the number of times she needs to make that death march out to the forest...not to mention its better for the environment! The way it works is you pack the stove full of millet chaff or peanut shells, both of which are readily available waste products, leaving just a small hole in the center for the fire to burn. This insulates the fire, resulting in less loss of heat while also providing a secondary slow-burning source of fuel. What could be a more perfect parting gift for the woman whose adopted me as her own and taken such good care of me over the last two years than something that will make her life easier?

Hot hot hot!

Beat the Heat

Hot Season (n)- The time of year where the
sand gets so hot that it burns and blisters
your feet through your sandals. See: Hell.

Hot season has officially returned to Senegal, after a blissfully long "cold" season during which temperatures hovered between 70 and 80 during the day and dipped to a frigid 60 degrees at night. The thermometer is now regularly climbing past the 100s, making it all but impossible to do even the simplest of tasks between 10am and 5pm. I hear things are getting a bit balmy in America as well, with temperatures in Virginia "soaring" into the 80s. You don't survive three hot seasons in Senegal without picking up a trick or two, so I offer you the following 10 tips for maximum comfort in the midst of the heat, no matter where you may be:

1. Hot season is the time of year where the water in your filter, at room temperature, needs to be sipped slowly in order to keep from burning your tongue. Trick yourself into thinking your water is cold by first chewing some minty gum, or putting a tic-tac in your mouth.

2. Sleeping in temperatures in excess of 90 degrees can be a sweaty affair. Reduce perspiration and maximize your comfort by laying like a starfish to ensure that none of your body parts are touching any of your other body parts. This includes spreading out fingers and toes. Remain perfectly still for at least 30 minutes and you will come to realize that the air is actually several degrees cooler than your body temperature. Who knew?

3. The starfish method can be a bit of a challenge for first-timers, so if you're having difficulty maintaining perfect stillness you can always opt for the "fan to exhaustion" method. Start with a small hand fan (an old magazine works just fine) and position yourself in such a way that you can create a small breeze by just rotating your wrist. Reducing the amount of muscles used to fan yourself greatly reduces the amount of heat you generate in the act of fanning. Continue this motion until you are too sleepy to fan, then when you are too hot to sleep, repeat.

 4. Since you will undoubtedly wake up in a pool of your own sweat anyway, why not soak all of your clothes in water for a preemptive strike. They will help cool you off as the water evaporates, and they take approximately two hours to dry completely, by which time you should be fast asleep.

5. When all of these methods fail, you sometimes need to resort to drastic measures...although you'll need to plan ahead. As the sun is setting, bike anywhere between 2 and 25 kilometers to your nearest source of electricity and purchase an old Coke bottle full of frozen water (a magical substance also known as ice). Hide this ice under your pillow, and when it is time to go to bed you can snuggle with it all night long. Take periodic sips throughout the night to fight dehydration.

6. When trying to escape the heat during the day, be aware that huts with grass roofs stay marginally cooler than huts with tin roofs. That same grass that allows water in to ruin all of your things in the rainy season also serves to let some of the heat out as it rises.


7. If you're fortunate to live in an area that has access to water all day long, you may opt to take a "pleasure shower" sometime after lunch. A pleasure shower is a bucket of water that you dump over your head for the sole purpose of cooling yourself off during the day, as opposed to the "real shower" bucket of water you dump over your head in the evening to try and get clean. You can enhance the enjoyment of the pleasure shower by pulling a warm bucket of water a day early and leaving it out overnight to cool down. Store it in a shady corner of your room to maintain the lowest possible temperature.

8. Bring your own shade. Since hot season coincides with dry season, the leaves on all of the the trees have most likely shriveled up and died just when you needed them the most. Rather than rely on inconsistent foliage, ensure that you always have shade by wearing a hat. Fashion must fall victim to function in these circumstances, so go with the biggest, floppiest, most ridiculous thing you can find. Think royalty at a wedding, southern belle at the Kentucky derby or a black lady in church. Enormous safari hats are all the rage with the toubabs, or you could opt for the local Pulaar version, which is essentially a lampshade woven out of grass that you balance precariously on your head. Or you could wear an actual lampshade.

9. You may notice in the hot season that the soles of your feet begin to blister and burn when walking distances of more than 100 yards. This is due to the extremely hot temperature of the sand beneath the thin layer of plastic that separates you from the elements, also known as your flip flop. The most logical way to remedy this situation is to pick one spot before 11am and don't move from it until after 5pm. If you absolutely must change locations throughout the day, I recommend spending $2 on a pair of platform flip-flops, available at a sandal retailer near you. Although double the price, these shoes offer a thick foam sole that elevates you double the distance from the hot sand. Although not a complete fix, the platform flip-flop will allow you to travel approximately 200 yards before experiencing the excruciating pain associated with second degree burns.

10. If you happen to live in America, please disregard the above tips and tricks, stop complaining and go inside where there's air conditioning.