Hello everyone. Rainy season has settled in and we’re getting showers or storms every other day. Pleasant to sit in and read or rest. Exquisite to see green things growing again. I planted my backyard with everything I want to eat in another 3 months. Including watermelons and a pineapple! All the farmers are out dragging plows behind donkeys, bulls, or an occasional horse. Seeding and weeding the foot high corn and sorghum. Watching the cotton and peanuts come up and spraying them with insecticides all willy nilly with no personal protection equipment. The work season is here. Days when there’s always something to do. The down times watching showers roll in have also been permitting me time to ponder the rapidly approaching close of this quest. Certainly a long road, and I’m very content with the experiences, Peace Corps has been an adventure.
Though adventures are fun, it’s the familiar comforts that often occupy the mind of an adventurer. For two years I’ve been sleeping under a mosquito net with no blanket because of the inescapable heat. While not my only discomforts or activities that bear no resemblance to my childhood, I’m very excited to return to my origins. I’ve been savoring the thought of sleeping in my old bed, three heavy blankets over me with comfortable sheets. No net. No probability of waking and asking a large scorpion to politely leave my room. I want to see snow and feel really cold so that the warmth from the crackling fire is all the more enjoyable. The prospect of seeing family and friends for the holidays, and for some people after a two year absence, is countering the less calming effects of living outside of one’s culture. Water on tap, microwaves and washing machines and the great porcelain bowl… don’t under appreciate your amenities. I intend to write a full section of positives to be missed and negatives a little later though.
So the ileum is the last segment of the small intestine right before the colon. The adventures within it were not my own. I am currently in the sick bay at the Peace Corps office in dakar because I have been off and on sick for the past several months. Multiple cases of giardia and odd side effects to unknown illnesses and weight loss, tiredness and lack of energy. I didn’t really put all of these things together. Volunteers latch onto the mentality that things ‘aren’t serious’ because medical procedures split things between emergency and non emergency. A good means of differentiating workloads to overworked medical staff, but we as volunteers tend to fall into the same way of thinking, ‘if it isn’t important enough to call med emergency, it isn’t important’. So all my total symptoms were spaced out enough that I didn’t think it was much of a problem. Then I had a new case of giardia a week ago, conveniently timed with an Peace Corps event which had Peace Corps transit(much better than local transit, and free), going all the way to dakar. Here is a breakdown of giardia. It begins with stomach cramps which, as another volunteer accurately described, “feels like your stomach is a wet towel being wrenched dry”. I was less than pleased to be standing up during the second half of that day. The afternoon was plagued with very sulfurous gas. Someone asked who had passed gas in pleasant company and I informed them that it was A. a burp, and B. FAR more unpleasant to release than to detect afterword. I recall coming close to vomiting from some of these, due in part to nausea. One has no appetite for most of the duration of a bout of giardia. The gas is annoyingly frequent as well, every several minutes for half a day. Then you get into the flush stage when your body decides to simply start over from scratch and evict everything. This means watery stool every ten to twenty minutes for 4 hours. Thankfully another volunteer picked up some giardia meds for me and that helped. Then the event(of which I missed half) was over and the bus was returning to dakar. I came up here and had an appointment to discover that worms had also been vacationing in my ileum. So have taken a de-wormer as well. This seems to explain the lack of energy and tiredness. Hard to do much of anything when the limited diet you have is being stolen by little critters. Should be feeling better in a few weeks though. I’m excited to get back to work and wrap everything up.
So the ileum is the last segment of the small intestine right before the colon. The adventures within it were not my own. I am currently in the sick bay at the Peace Corps office in dakar because I have been off and on sick for the past several months. Multiple cases of giardia and odd side effects to unknown illnesses and weight loss, tiredness and lack of energy. I didn’t really put all of these things together. Volunteers latch onto the mentality that things ‘aren’t serious’ because medical procedures split things between emergency and non emergency. A good means of differentiating workloads to overworked medical staff, but we as volunteers tend to fall into the same way of thinking, ‘if it isn’t important enough to call med emergency, it isn’t important’. So all my total symptoms were spaced out enough that I didn’t think it was much of a problem. Then I had a new case of giardia a week ago, conveniently timed with an Peace Corps event which had Peace Corps transit(much better than local transit, and free), going all the way to dakar. Here is a breakdown of giardia. It begins with stomach cramps which, as another volunteer accurately described, “feels like your stomach is a wet towel being wrenched dry”. I was less than pleased to be standing up during the second half of that day. The afternoon was plagued with very sulfurous gas. Someone asked who had passed gas in pleasant company and I informed them that it was A. a burp, and B. FAR more unpleasant to release than to detect afterword. I recall coming close to vomiting from some of these, due in part to nausea. One has no appetite for most of the duration of a bout of giardia. The gas is annoyingly frequent as well, every several minutes for half a day. Then you get into the flush stage when your body decides to simply start over from scratch and evict everything. This means watery stool every ten to twenty minutes for 4 hours. Thankfully another volunteer picked up some giardia meds for me and that helped. Then the event(of which I missed half) was over and the bus was returning to dakar. I came up here and had an appointment to discover that worms had also been vacationing in my ileum. So have taken a de-wormer as well. This seems to explain the lack of energy and tiredness. Hard to do much of anything when the limited diet you have is being stolen by little critters. Should be feeling better in a few weeks though. I’m excited to get back to work and wrap everything up.
Work. As the rains have settled in and farmers have begun farming, my goal is to get the trees we planted several months ago into the fields. If the trees make it into the fields early they should grow enough during the rainy season to live through the dry season. For reference I had about 100% die off from my first year because everything was done too late and then poorly cared for through the last rainy season. Hopefully working with new individuals who seem very motivated, will keep the trees alive. With about 35 farmers in 4 villages I’m looking to get about 1500 to 2000 trees in the ground over the next several weeks. Most cashew trees, also some mango and orange. Once that is finished I’ll be focusing on grafting classes. Some of the varieties of tree that grow best here produce small fruit, so we graft frequently. Better producing varieties don’t deal with the soil and seasons very well so we have to make zombie plants. Plant a local variety and then cut a twig from something that has higher quality fruit. Then cut the new twig into the top of the local and if it takes and begins to grow cut off the original. So you have local variety roots interacting with soil and seasons they are familiar with, but a top that produces better quality fruit. I’ll be going around teaching techniques and going through the large amount of information relevant to the process. Also trying to teach a little bit of water conservation. Farmers tend to be annoyed by water cutting through their fields but have no motivation to alter it. I constantly see fields on slightly sloped hills, and the fields are plowed so the water runs right out down the lines. If they were to rotate 90 degrees and plow in that orientation the water would sit in the lines and the plants would have access to much more water. Also deforestation is a big problem, everybody goes out to the woods and cuts down whatever they want. There’s no forethought to next year. So as trees are removed from fields and the sun bakes the soil during the dry season, big rain storms dump water which cuts large swaths of ground from everywhere. No projects without problems I guess.
In addition to all the work I need to wrap up I have things to do in preparation of departure from Senegal. The group I entered the country with has a four day conference in September. We’ll be doing some final medical clearance, having our language skills evaluated (so we can be told if we’re allowed to write whatever language we learned on a future resume), getting some time to work resumes, and listen to some reintegration strategies. I’ll be writing a report summarizing the work I did and how effective it was, partially for records and partially for the volunteer replacing me. This means that I’ll need to review all the work I’ve done thus far and look for any trees I helped put in the ground and see if they’re still alive. The end of October is the visit trainees have halfway through training where they get a feel for the conditions awaiting them. This helps them orient themselves within the second month of training before they begin living in their communities. I should be hosting my replacement in village for several days and introducing them to important people and locations. We will have a welcoming gathering for the trainees and then I’ll only have several days in village before needing to make the last trek along the 4 mile bush path I’ve been riding so frequently for the past 2 years. Stay a few nights in the regional house packing and making sure everything is in its place and not forgotten. Then its up to dakar for 4 days of final meetings and paperwork before the plane leaves. At this point it looks as though I’ll be flying to dubai in The United Arab Emirates for a short layover and then flying to Boston. I intend to then take a bus to Portland and probably stay for a night before finishing the trip back to PI. Likely having to endure a welcome back gathering, but what can you do?It is my intention to work on two more posts before leaving. 1 of everything bad that I won’t miss and 1 of everything that I will miss and am happy to have acquired while here. Peace ya’ll.
