We ate the alarm clock for lunch

Today for your enjoyment I have assembled several little stories to amuse you. The first begins with a trip 30km from my village to a language training seminar that lasted one week. Peace Corps gave us a little money to pay for food over the five day event. The event was simply having one of our language instructors and several volunteers do a follow up training which would give us the opportunity to get some questions answered on any challenges we’d had in village after a month and a half. Myself and three other volunteers were tenting out in the backyard of one persons hut and taking morning lessons from our teacher, Samba Kande(he’s a cool cat). This story though… is about chickens.
As soon as you try to do anything garden-wise in Senegal you realize one thing, which is that all animals are assholes. They eat your crops and dig up everything and generally just want to make sure that since things weren't quite hard enough… they’d make them just a bit harder by ruining all your hopes and dreams by having no respect for common decency and making as much noise at night as they do during the day. This had been the case for the volunteer who was our host for language seminar. Her backyard was constantly ravaged by the asshole chickens. One afternoon we returned to find a rooster lying in her backyard and it didn’t get up as we approached it. We next noticed that its feet were tied together and to a nearby post which accounted for its apathy. From this we surmised that some of the money given to her host family must have gone into the purchase of a chicken for one of our meals. Although it being late in the day meant that the chicken would be alive for the remainder of the day… and therefore the morning… meaning it would make plenty of noise for us to wake up to, and it did. I awoke to the roosters ignorant crowing the next morning at 5am. I was able to acquire a little more sleep before waking up at 7. Thankfully the annoying chicken was taken out while we breakfasted and hastily murdered. After class when the two bowls were brought into the hut for lunch there was chicken meat to be had. Also a unique centerpiece consisted of the chickens legs shoved through the mouth of the chicken’s head and the whole thing apparently cooked along with the rest of the meal.

My bathroom/shower area is a circular concrete pad with a hole in the middle, and at night big ole cockroaches like to exit and visit the surrounding areas on what I can only imagine to be inexpensive cockroach holidays or vacations. A few weeks ago I notice that one of the malnourished cats in my village was hanging around my shower area at night but didn’t think much of it. Then I saw it catch and eat a cockroach so I made a mental note to myself ‘cats eat cockroaches’. That is all.

One of the trips we made on our language seminar trip was to our host volunteer’s father’s charcoal pile. The process is very interesting to watch. They collect wood and make a big pile about seven feet tall and twelve feet wide. Then the pile is covered with grass and the grass with dirt. Then segments of the grass are lit on fire and the dirt covering keeps out enough air for a proper fire to take place but everything on the inside is burned except the carbon structure of the stick. Then you sell all your nice charcoal for a good profit and people all over Senegal use it to cook or make tea or whatever.

Cooking in Senegal is largely done in a pot over a small fire. There are three stones or objects to hold the pot about eight inches off the ground and a tiny fire is lit under it, typically with three or four sticks pointing to the center and as they burn the chef simply moves the ends into the center little by little. Most of what I consume is machined or hand pounded corn, millet, or sorghum steamed over whatever sauce is to go on it once it is ready. The cooking pot is placed on the fire and the sauce has too much water in it, but then a large shallow dish that looks somewhat like a wok is added above the cooking pot. This dish has holes in it and steam from the sauce rises into the cornmeal textured cereal cooking it. After it’s done the cereal is dished into communal bowls and topped with the sauce. Sauces come in several varieties but are generally salty and made with leaves. Sauces include maffe gerse which is cooked crushed peanuts and tomatoes, laalo is boabob tree leaves and is very slimy and green, follere is a thick green sauce made with okra, and usually jambo which is a salty watery sauce with moringa tree leaves and crushed peanuts.

Chickens can survive with one foot. There was a chick in my village which ran around hobbling and favoring a leg which had some string or something caught on it. As the chicken grew I presume the string cut off circulation and the foot died and fell off or something. Upon my return from the language seminar I found my crippled comrade meandering around on one foot and one stump. Just another interesting thing one might learn in Africa. 

 Here are some panorama shots from the inside of my hut. The mosquito net is above where my bed typically sits, although the bed was outside and I was sleeping in my backyard at the time of this photo.

 Here is a shot of the garden I work in, usually watering and transplanting and insect control.

 Here is a neat pile of bricks drying in the sun. The hole behind them is just water mixed with whatever you find when digging a hole. Then you wait a week and BAM! your house is halfway done.

 Pictured above are some tiny mangos just a growin! I can't wait for the them to be ripe. It looks like a medium tree should put out 600 or so and a large tree somewhere around 3000. There are about 25 big trees around my village. Yum.

 This is to give you an idea of the currency I carry around and never use in my village. Since my host family provides food daily and I need little else, plus there isn't much to buy, you just don't need money unless you're in a bigger town.

This is my work space. I'm going for sixteenth century philosopher trying to be up nights writing notes by candlelight.

This would be a shot of my backyard. The shower/bath area to the right.

Here is an average meal. There's rice, boabob leaf sauce, and crushed hot pepper. Typically one would use their RIGHT hand and mix some ingredients, then form them into a ball and place it into their mouth. I use a spoon.

But that doesn't mean that I can't go 30km out of village and sit in a hotel restaurant and enjoy stuff like this!

With disinterested apathy,

-Tom