Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Sometimes I can't believe this stuff is real.

Relax, I'm In Good Hands

 I debated writing this post because I didn't want anyone at home to worry, but this story has a happy ending and I wanted you all to know just how well my family takes care of me here. This also includes unrelated pictures because no one wants a blog post full of words...think of them as commercial breaks.

The word sai sai has two different meanings...joking trickster or murdering rapist. Actually, to be fair its more of a spectrum, and most sai sais fall closer to the former end, but last week I had an encounter with one closer to the latter. The short version is I met a man at a boutique in Kaolack while I was trying to bargain to exchange my new cell phone for an older model (long story). Since Seereer is a minority language here (ie no one in the city speaks it) and my wolof and french are both pretty limited this was a rather long and complicated process. While I was going from boutique to boutique greeting the shopkeepers, introducing myself and attempting to negotiate a fair trade this guy decided to appoint himself my "assistant." These services usually come along with a marriage proposal so I told him I didn't need any help, but he came with me anyway. After two unsuccessful attempts he asked me if I wanted to see his shop where he sells "merchandise." I had a feeling this guy had never done an honest sale in his life so I asked what time it was, pretended to be surprised and told him I had to get to the garage so I could be back in my village before breaking of the fast. He asked if I knew where I was going in the garage and I said Keur Madialbel (which is a town 20k past my village, but I take that car because it passes through my road town). I hustled off to the garage then doubled back on another street and hit a few more boutiques before I managed to exchange my cell phone (without any help thank you very much) and headed back to my village. Out of sight, out of mind right? Wrong.

The baby duck my friend Bass gave me after he saw a picture of Oxford

The next day I'm sitting in my hut with my eleven year old sister Aissatou and my four year old brother Modu when my mom comes in and tells me to "Greet your guest." And who should step through the door but Mr. Creepy. I didn't even recognize him at first because it was so improbable that he should even be in my village let alone in my hut. Before I can register what is going on my mom leaves and Aiou decides she wants to go finish getting her hair braided, and neither of them picked up on my hints that I wanted them to stay. So its me and a 4 year old and a sai sai sitting awkwardly in my room. This might be a good time to mention the guy doesn't even speak Seereer, so while I'm trying to ask him why he is here and tell him its inappropriate for me to have a man in my room, communication isn't really working out. Finally I ask him if he even bothered to greet my father and he said no, so I took him out to the courtyard and quickly and quietly explained the situation to my dad. My dad made small talk with him in Wolof for a while and then firmly told him to leave and not come back.

After he left I asked my dad what exactly happened, and my dad said that with just my name and the direction I lived, in the guy was able to track me down. That's the downside of being one of the only white people around...everyone knows you. Apparently he went to Keur Madialbel and asked around until someone told him I lived in Sambande. I immediately got on the phone to the Peace Corps Safety and Security guy and told him what had happened, and while I was on the phone the sai sai came back and said he had dropped some money in my room. My dad when to look, told the guy he was lying and told him to get out of town, then sent one of my siblings to spy on him and make sure he really left. It was clear that this guy thought I was a rich white person (I wish), but just how he planned on getting my money by showing up in our compound in broad daylight is a mystery to us all.

The monitor lizard that got into my room and ate the
baby duck, which was promptly killed and eaten by my
brothers. ((cue circle of life song from the Lion King))

Here's the happy ending to the story: my dad is protective of me that he has forbidden me to ever go to Kaolack by myself again (fat chance...) and he immediately called my uncle in Keur Socce to look out for the guy and make sure he really left the area. Then he called the gendarmes and the president of the community rurale (a pretty important guy) and told them what happened. Then that night when I went to bed my older brother Malik posted himself as a sentry outside my hut and stayed awake all night to make sure the guy didn't come back (it made me feel a lot safer, but I still slept with my machete). Even my four year old brother said that if the guy came back he would “beat him until he shits,” a common threat kids get from their parents here. So as you can see, I am nothing if not well taken care of here...nothing to worry about!

In other news, Ramadan ends either tomorrow or the next day (the Marabout has to officially see the moon to declare it over), and we celebrate with a holiday called Korite. We all dress in our fanciest clothes and every family kills a sheep and we eat and eat until we've gained back all the weight we lost while fasting. It should be a blast! I must say I am going to miss our 7:30 breaking of the fast with bush coffee (boiled leaves with a ton of sugar) and bread, although I will be glad to not have to wait until 9:30 to eat dinner...that's way past my bedtime.

My brothers Samba and Modou with the heads...

...and Aissatou with the rest of the chicken

Nothing Beats a Senegalese Dance Party

I finally had enough time at the regional house to upload this video. This is the dance party the ladies held after our women's group meeting. They all tied their head wraps together, and whoever's head wrap was pulled out of the pile had to challenge the other person to a dance off in order to get it back. The formidable woman in the purple is our village wedding singer, or more appropriately wedding screamer. She has a megaphone that she yells into at weddings and baptisms and if she improvises a song with your name in it you have to give money for the bride/new mother. Her improv is actually pretty good...think of her as a Senegalese Adam Sandler.

Garden Pictures

I have so much okra and I can't eat it or give it away fast enough!

Nothing that comes in care packages goes to waste...not even after its eaten! These are chinese orchid seeds that I got from the botanical garden in Mbour.

A forest of okra and tomato with cucumbers hidden in the back row.

Cucumbers!

The next round of tomato plants, sprouted and waiting for transplant.

Do Work!

Believe it or not in between the bucket baths and the big snakes I actually do manage to get some work done in my village. I have a few big projects in the pipeline including a village wide latrine project, a school environmental education club and a new well and a womens co-op garden... but those things need to wait until the end of the rainy season and the start of the next school year. In the mean time I've been doing a lot of smaller-scale projects to help pass the time.

How many Senegalese men does it take to plant a tree?

Two weeks ago I went out to the forest with all the men in my village to plant a bunch of trees as a part of a re-forestation project run by the Eaux et Forets department. We planted about 300 thorny species trees in one fell swoop and got back to the village before mid-day prayer.

I told the Eaux et Forets officials to strike a pose
and this was what they came up with...

All of that work I did in my garden I'm finally starting to reap the benefits...not only do I have fresh okra and cucumbers right out my back door, but people are so excited about the success I've had that they want gardens of their own. Last week Bassirou brought me to the back of his compound and showed me a space he had covered with fertilizer and asked me if it would make a good garden plot. I told him if he would clear away the weeds I would provide the seeds and help prepare the beds, so for the last week I've been going over every morning to double dig and help him plant. Ideally I would love for every household to have at least one 1x4m garden plot to help supplement their diet.

Two women helping shave the soap to make neem lotion

Last Sunday I held a meeting with our local women's group to talk about getting together money to get a peanut sheller for our village (more on that in a later post) and I figured I would use that opportunity to do a neem lotion demonstration since its the height of the mosquito season. The meeting was scheduled for 10am, so of course it was 11:15 before everyone had arrived and we were ready to start. The women talked about the pros and cons of buying a nut sheller while I showed them how to make the lotion, then I divided it into little baggies so each woman could take some home to try out. So far I've gotten a lot of really positive feedback that the lotion worked to ward off the mosquitoes, and one woman even stopped me in the road town at the weekly market to tell me she was going to buy a bar of soap and make some herself. The ladies ended the meeting with a dance party. They all put their head scarves in a pile and the leader of the women's group ties them together in twos then pulls one randomly out of the pile. The two people who own the scarves have to come out and dance to get them back.  The dancing went on for a good hour before a flash rainstorm sent everyone running for cover.

Latest News...I'm Hungry

Here's a quick recap of my life since In Service Training...sorry its been so long since I gave a proper update!


First things first...THANK YOU!
To everyone who sent me a care package in the past month...you are all amazing! Keep an eye on your mailboxes for letters and thank you notes and maybe even some other goodies if I can afford the shipping. I really appreciate every single letter and package I receive, its like a little bit of home and its so nice to know that somewhere, sometime someone was thinking of me. You all are the best! As of now I am fully stocked on tea (probably for the next two years) but if you're sending a letter and you want to throw in a tuna packet I wouldn't object.

Ramadan
Ramadan started in my village on the 11th with the sighting of the new moon. For the next month we will all wake up at 4:30 to eat breakfast before the sun rises and then fast until anywhere from 7-8pm depending on the sunset. Since none of us will be eating or drinking (some of the more hardcore villagers won't even swallow their own spit) for the majority of the day I don't have much hope of getting a lot of work done in this next month, but it does give me a lot of time to meet with various people in the village to start the planning phase of a couple of projects. Since Ramadan is supposed to be about restraint and spiritual growth I'm planning on reading through the whole New Testament in the next month. Not eating or drinking all day is tough, but we break the fast every night with a piece of bread and some boiled leaf "coffee" which is actually really delicious, and instead of millet we eat rice for dinner. And lukewarm water never tasted as good as it does when you haven't had anything to drink for 14 hours.



New Roommate
This is Robert, a giant snail that has moved into my hut and likes to occupy himself by munching on my cement floor. I thought about making him pay rent but he's so entertaining that I let him slide for this month. Besides, he's a huge improvement on the rat that was living in my room last month. He was loud and messy and I ended up trapping him in a bucket with a lid and shaking it until he died. Let that be a warning to my future roommates...don't poop under my cabinets!



Teamwork
This past week I spent a couple of days in Fasstoucouleur about 8k away helping my neighboring volunteer and one of her villagers Abdoul Salaam work on setting up a field as part of PC Senegal's Master Farmer Program. The idea is to create a place where people from the surrounding area can come to see and learn about different agricultural techniques that they might want to incorporate into their own fields. People here are very hesitant to try new farming techniques and practices because if it isn't successful they could lose everything, but if they can see the results of a specific practice they can decide whether they think it is a worthwhile investment without having to risk their livelihoods. We spent one day measuring out twelve 10x9 meter demo plots to show the various effects of different amendments on different types of crops. The next day we transplanted over 200 thorny trees to create a "live fence." Next on the list is weeding and seeding, and eventually we will be working to put in a permaculture garden, drip irrigation system and tree pepiniere. 


My thumbs might be green...
Speaking of gardens, I came back from In Service Training to find that my little back yard plot had exploded into a forest of okra, tomatoes, carrots and cucumber. I must admit I wasn't really sure what a white girl from New Jersey who never even watered a house plant was supposed to teach people about gardening in the desert, but apparently I've been doing something right. I'm taking my new found confidence and the seeds that you all sent me to set up a larger demonstration garden near my family compound. I've got a space 15 meters long by 8 meters wide and if all goes well it will soon be full of vegetables. For now I just want to get some trees pepiniered and start working to amend the soil, but eventually I envision it as a smaller version of the Pilot Farmer field where I can demonstrate different permaculture techniques...its easier to explain something to people if they can see it. 


Imagination Station
Since people aren't going out to the fields as often because of Ramadan the kids in my village have a little more free time. I taught them duck, duck, goose (canara, canara, cek), hopscotch and the cup game, but they've been doing a pretty good job of occupying themselves. My littlest brother likes to pee in the dirt and then make "mud cakes" but the older kids are a little more sophisticated. They built this "auto" out of some cinder blocks and spent about an hour driving all over Senegal. The funny thing is they all squished themselves together just like they would be on real public transportation.

Its raining, its pouring!
We had a bit of a scare at the beginning of the month when we went 14 days without any rain. The skies would go black, the wind would whip up, and then the clouds would spit three raindrops on us and move on. The crops were starting to dry out and even the weeds around our village were looking thirst. Luckily the rains hit us hard two days ago with a two hour torrential downpour. It rained so hard that I was able to take a shower without having to pour a single cup of water, and I collected enough rain to water my garden for four days! The downside is the ground was so dry that it took a while to sink in and I spent half the storm frantically digging diversion trenches to keep the water out of my hut and try to drain my back yard. True to the saying...when it rains it pours!

A little birdie told me...
That they really don't like being caught and tied together and dragged around by a string. Unfortunately this is one of my sibling's favorite hobbies. Real Bear Grylls style they put out a bowl of millet and make a few slipknots tied to stakes in the ground and then wait for one to get caught. Unlike Bear Grylls though they don't eat the birds, they just tie them up and torture them for a few hours then let them go. I guess its better to be a bird than a lizard though. The monitor lizards here grow up to 3 feet long and for the most part don't bother anyone, but that didn't stop the boys from killing one with my machete when we were out in the fields last week. They were planning on cooking and eating it so at least it won't go to waste, but it still seems a bit of a shame. Our Environmental Club is going to have to work on some respecting wildlife murals or something.


Well I suppose thats about all for now. I've settled into a pretty comfortable routine since IST and I'm finally starting to feel like I'm accomplishing something. I'm still going to have to wait until after rainy season to build any latrines and I can't start with the EE club until school is back in session, but at least I have my garden to keep me busy and plenty of work to be done at the Master Farmer field.

But you gotta have friends...

"Much of the vitality in a friendship lies in the honoring of differences, not simply in the enjoyment of similarities." -Anonymous

Meet Bassirou Mbodgi, my next door neighbor and best friend in Sambande. When I'm in the village he's the person I spend 80% of my time with. Mostly we just sit under the shade tree and joke around, but he also helps me with projects, walks with me to the road town and teaches me wolof and seereer. Most Senegalese people (people in general?) only help you if they think they can get something out of it, but Bass has never once asked me for anything...he won't even let me buy him a bean sandwich when we go to the road town. Sometimes I think I would go completely crazy in my village if it wasn't for him...its good to have someone I can let my guard down around.