The Subtle Stressors

       I feel that one of the hardest things to communicate for anyone is their struggles. People refrain from sharing their concerns because they don't want to waste other people's time, or look weak, or burden those around them, or they simply believe that their own story is uninteresting. I wouldn't be sharing my stories online if it weren't both an excellent means of sharing with family and remembering my time here in Africa. I often find what I do to be uninteresting and just between you and I, being perceived as incapable of dealing with life in general by others is often the cause of me being quiet or deliberately derailing conversions with a non-sequitur. Then every time you do start to feel stressed that damnable intellect has to cut in and tell you "but there are others who have it worse than you." This is very true for my current circumstances, living in a third world country makes emotional discontent seem like a huge luxury. How does one justify 'feeling lonely'  or some such grievance when people around you are hungry and losing family members and children to malaria and malnutrition. I can intellectually process my situation, though contemplating weather or not I have the right to 'feel bad' only really adds to the pile of worries I drag around anyway.

       I think my problems continue to burden me with respect to the new challenges seen around me because of the cultural lens I see them through. In the culture which nurtured me to my current age I rarely experienced these situations. My mind organized the totality of my experiences into good and bad and the extremes of either side. We organize our experiences into a linear scale as we cognize them. Each new experience is placed along the scale as good, bad, or neutral and then we compare any new experiences against all the previous ones we have collected giving us our own cultural context. A child who is the product of a first world country would organize the experience of consuming a pizza differently than a child in a third world country. The first world child would likely have many positive experiences rated above that of the meal and this would make the pizza look mediocre, or uninteresting. A third world child sees the experience as novel and, if taste-buds agree, delicious. The rating of the same experience is rated much higher for the second child due to the comparison of all prior experiences.
       Living in a dramatically different culture than the one you grew up in is like a plunge into ice-water for your experience gauge. Tons of new experiences come flooding in and dramatically shift how you perceive the world. Suddenly it becomes difficult to justify concerns for paying off student loans over the next fifteen years when the people around you are worrying about weather or not their children will live through the month. (Side note; during the four months I have been in my village only about five people have died out of the three hundred person population, with four or five births as well. We in America have diseases and so forth as well but the reality of our situation is that the premature death of a loved one feels like a failure on the part of society and not a common and acceptable occurrence.) Perception of the same experiences changes with the different cultural backgrounds. An excellent reason to travel, if one has the means, is the broadening of experiences which permit a more accurate system of experience classification in the future. If you've seen much of the world and the challenges of others you find much of your own concerns to be quite insignificant in a different cultural context. (Note; if you still intend to live in your own culture, the cultural contexts you already know are going to work best for you. Refrain from throwing them out entirely.)
       The real question here is "How should I, as a visitor to this region/reality, incorporate what I experience here into all that I have experienced prior? How do I choose to act in light of all the things which I know now and did not know earlier?" The question is hypothetical because I won't waste my time endlessly reviewing potential future experiences in light of recently added experiences. Rather the information gained will be used to deal with new experiences as they arise. Which is life isn't it? Learning and doing so as to have the ability to handle new experiences efficiently and rationally.
       New experiences in this context function as a tool. The interesting paradigm of any tool is that once obtained, the owner has the capacity of choice. Being the owner of a bicycle does not imply the necessity to use it. I studied martial arts to give myself a tool in the knowledge of defense. In truth I have no desire to hurt a person and may refrain from using the tool, my knowledge, to defend myself. I would prefer to use it to keep other people from being injured. What I have gained with all forms of knowledge, training, or experience is choice. If I lack the bicycle then I do not have the option to use it when I want to. The same is true of experiences. After acquiring all these new experiences I have the choice of perceiving things through my own cultural context or through the new expanded cultural context of multiple cultures. If I wish to sympathize with one of my friends or have a problem while I'm in the United States I need to use the cultural context of my youth to relate and process information. Having experiences outside of my original cultural context gives me the option to sympathize and problem solve in new ways and effectively operate in different and varying environments. Though in the end these are MY experiences and making another person understand what I have been through is difficult.
       I recently read the book Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse which is a fictional tale of a young man in India searching for enlightenment. As a youth he meets, but refrains from studying under, 'a Buddha' or 'enlightened one' and chooses to go off and live his own life because it is his believe that he needs to experience life. Great truths cannot be taught they must be earned. After living as an educated young man, then a homeless beggar, then a hedonistic merchant Siddhartha settles as a ferryman living peacefully next to a river. When a son is reunited with Siddhartha in his later years he yearns to keep the young man at his side while knowing that he cannot verbally teach him all the wisdom he has gained by experiencing life, and thus needs to let the boy leave and discover. If, upon my return home people ask me to impart them with my wisdom I do not think I will have the ability. I can attempt to recreate my experiences with fantastic stories, yet to fully comprehend any of them one would need to experience something for themselves. I don't wish to return and constantly be saying "This is just like that time in the Peace Corps...", because I'm not truly sharing, I'm simply trying to make others think more highly of myself by reminding them of 'all my selflessness'. The reality is that as an individual I will gain far more from the experiences here than I will be able to impart assistance on the local communities. This is information I KNEW when I agreed to leave. I wanted the experiences and the ability to function in new environments and deal with varying problems. I do also enjoy helping people but that is less than 50% of the reason I am here. It certainly isn't so I can return home and have everybody think I'm awesome, because frankly I don't give a shit what people think about me, and my friends know it. Heh heh.
       The overall point to this is that many people think that I'm over here going through all these 'hardships' of no running water, electricity, and I get sick sometimes, but honestly the difficulties are intellectual. Incorporating my new experiences into my old worldview undermines the importance of some of the things I valued. Now I must realign my perceptions of hardship with my new experiences. A flat tire is no longer a huge grievance it is simply a trifle of an inconvenience.  Life here isn't so different from life back home. People work and prepare food and hang out with their family and friends. Adjusting to the routine is easy because you either incorporate the lifestyle here into your own or you leave this place. It's far more difficult to fit your experiences into a broadening worldview than it is to draw water from a well.

       Sorry if this is over the top. I can answer questions and so forth if you have any. Some pics too.

Little boy from my village standing next to a large gourd. The gourds are cut in half and used as bowls or a hole is put in the top for carrying grains or water.

This is my homestay(the house we stay at during training to learn cultural norms and language) mom Kumba Seydi, and an excellent meal prepared for the family. The six or so little children eat at one bowl, the young adults at another, and the parents and miscellaneous others eat from the last bowl. All with your hands!

This is a cool field near the seasonal river bed near my village. The little mounds are termite hills which the water erodes around the bases, making them look like giant mushrooms.

Each is about two feet tall or less and all of them together is a cool, if odd, sight.

While it is still dry season and often too sunny and most of the green has been burned or died there are still a few places of refuge that are beautiful. Sorry to all the people serving as volunteers in the north who have no trees. But here we've got the snakes and scorpions and evil baboons too.
       Thanks for reading.

Oooo is that edible?

       One of the fantastic bits about living in a new environment is sampling the local cuisine. While that is possible in the region of the world I am now inhabiting it is done in a different manner. Here you just walk out into the bush and find them, though they can be grown as well. Africa has one of the greatest potentials on the planet for agricultural exports of both flora and fauna. Animals, fruits, insects, and critters are in abundance and always very interesting to study.The people of Senegal love to have animals around as a type easily maintained investment. If you need a little cash sell a goat, sheep, or chicken. If you need more than that sell a cow! Children can be seen selling bush fruits and berries on the side of the road. I was offered a root from the woods which had been set near the fire and tasted of baked potato. While there is no Olive Garden the African wild certainly isn't lacking in food.
       In training I'd heard about a tasty little berry which was first introduced to me as I drank tea on the side of a road. Several children with a bucket were selling fist sized bags for a quarter. My host brother purchased some and they little semi dry skinned berries with a large pit tasted like apples with a sweet tang. The pit can be saved and planted to get more berries or used as a spiky fence to keep animals out of areas.
       One of the first times I'd greeted my entire village I stopped and sat on a bamboo mat next to an older man making a colorful basket cover. The children were momentarily curious with me as the 'new white person' but soon after returned to their task of hitting a tree and collecting the seed pods which fell from it. I was given several of the pods to suck on and they are a nice sour treat which can be made into one of my favorite watery sauces to accompany most types of rice dishes.

       The majestic representative of trees in Africa is the Baobob. Technically an herbaceous plant and not a tree, their massive forms dotting the semi-arid landscapes of Africa are one of the sights I know I will miss most when I leave this continent. The people of Senegal, ever utilizing their surroundings, use the leaves to make a very slimy sauce which I enjoy although I've heard mixed reviews from Peace Corps volunteers in general. The fruits of the tree are gathered by children and snacked upon. Opening one up reveals many seeds covered in what one might mistake for an organic foam. Sucking on them for a time provides a sour treat. The fruit is also soaked and sold by many women vendors on the streets.
       Slightly less natural than these are the planted mangoes, cashews, oranges, grapefruits, guavas, pomegranates, and bananas seen growing mostly in organized and watered gardens. The only ones I have sampled as of yet are cashews I found and cooked (poorly), grapefruits, and guavas. Luckily enough for me it is also my job as an Agricultural forestry volunteer to try and increase land yields and income with trees just like these!
       Here are some photos for ya!

         This is a chameleon I found while working behind the school in my village. They sell for $100 in pet stores in the United States. The Fulbe (ethnic group I live with) also have many legends and their culture greatly dislikes them. They believe that the little charms often adorning babies and children are negated if touched by one of these critters. Also apparently if it pees in your mouth you die. Which begs the question 'how the hell did it get in position to pee in your mouth?'. I've seen five or so of them wandering around in country though and they're pretty neat!

       This here is a mostly full grown mango tree. As is visible each one puts out a great many mangos for my consumption alone. Certainly not to sell. I asked my host brother if people also cook with them when they are ready and was told there are many sauces. Several days ago while celebrating the departure of a volunteer heading home her host family mashed up unripe mango, onion, and something else to make a potent but scrumptious snack.

       Some almost ripe mangoes hanging into the path I take to get to a garden I help at. Can you spot the cow looking for drops? Cows, donkeys, sheep, and goats love to eat the unripe fruits that fall from the tree.

        GUESS WHAT THIS IS!?!

        Figure it out yet?

        This is actually what a cashew looks like growing on the tree. First the nut forms then the 'apple' fills in behind it, ripens off to a nice red or yellow and falls from the tree. To harvest cashews correctly the underside of the tree is cleared and one waits for the ripened fruit and nut to fall from the tree. Every other day you collect all the nuts which are sold off and processed elsewhere. If not sold children love to burn them in fields because of the toxic fumes the nut emits when cooked, then crack them open and eat the nut inside. Nuts which had been sold are roasted and opened then reroasted to give the desirable semi-hard density which we all love. Finally a secondary coat is removed from the final product we are familiar with. It is likely that most of us living in regions of the world without cashews have remained, until this reading, ignorant of the nature of cashew growth. The lengthy processing procedure may also help you rationalize the price difference in this nut and some others.

        I think one of the most startling things I've learned while being in Senegal is that the cashew tree produces TWO amazingly delicious things. Regrettably due to the fact that within 24hrs of falling from the tree the fruit is incredibly bruised and looses much of it's flavor and greatly reduces its marketability. Sorry! Have to be here the time of year they're ripe if you wanna try one! It tastes a little like a strawberry with a hint of maybe apple and is incredibly juicy but also does the thing to your mouth that chokecherries do and dries it out. One of the projects being worked on in Senegal is food transformation. Changing the form of something like fresh cashew apples or mangoes to something like jam or dried fruit so it can be marketed and not go to waste.

        SO TASTY!

        Here are a batch that will probably be ripe in three or so more days!

        While I have eaten warthog and many bush roots and seeds and leaves and berries I must thank my family for this wonderful treat I hide in my room in case I end up feeling a little undernourished from all the hunting and gathering lifestyle. Thanks family this stuff is fantastic and I dip into it especially this season (hasn't rained in three and a half months) and stored food is on the decline. Feel free question too! Au revoir!

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

Insh Allah

Several weeks ago I was down working in the garden I share with a man named Walli. I had just finished watering the entire garden by myself, a job which requires me to draw about 25 buckets of water, when Walli shows up. Often I do not see him it at all in the garden, which I do not blame him for because his brother passed away and he cares for his own family and his brothers in another village while working his fields and keeping up this garden. I am still at the stage in my language acquisition which dictates that I understand very little of what has been said to me and Walli begins telling me about what I gather to be his wife in the nearest town with a road, 4 miles away. He had spoken of her presence in the hospital there to me over the previous days but I didn’t understand the specifics. This time I gather that his wife is pregnant and then I catch onto the vague statement ‘baby died, but my wife is alive’. He follows this statement with ‘but you watered the garden, so that’s good’.  The loss of a child is a tragedy under any circumstance yet without competency in any common language I was unable to offer any condolences, and left standing there speechless. I think part of what offset me was the rapidity with which he moved onto the statement ‘but you watered the garden, so that’s nice’.  I theorized the reason which caused his actions were partially his own unique way of experiencing grief and partially a cultural normality of death as a very probable reality.  This event was followed by several similar ones which put me on a rather somber train of thought.

A week passed and one morning my host brother enters my hut and tells me that someone has died. Apparently a two year old child in a compound on the western side of my village died. My host brother tells me I should go and greet the family but leaves it at that. With little language under my control and no idea what one might say in such a situation I postpone for the expected greeting for the time. The next day someone asks me if I’ve greeted the family yet and I tell them I haven’t. Eventually my work partner comes to my hut and tells me I really should go and greet them and that he will help me. A work partner is a liaison between the volunteer and the village and culture. On the walk over I’m informed of the correct thing to say which is “_____ died. God is sad and sorry.” I nervously make my attempt to say this in Pulaar to the grieving family, worried that a screw up now might just make them feel worse. I’m still unsure whether the absence of their observable grief is cultural or individually based.  

Another two days pass and I wake up and head outside to greet the usual people with the five or six back and forth phrases. The first person I greet doesn’t greet me in return but tells me someone has died, and that this individual is the wife of my work partner. Now I’m just sinking fast because I consider my work partner to be an extremely nice man. Mama Sailliou(Sal-e-u) is his name, and he always speaks slowly and softly with me and tries his very best to bring me into comprehension.  I look on him almost like a Senegalese kindly old grandpa. Upon learning of his wife’s (whom I could not recall having met) passing it was all these ideas that made the event seem so saddening. Then I realized that I would need to go to his compound very soon and use the same words he’d taught me only days prior to communicate the culturally appropriate condolences. I began the short walk to his compound and arriving was informed that he had left and would return later in the day. It was nice to have a little time to process. Slow day, as one might expect, but as the sun began to set it was time to return and try again.

Half the community was grouped in the compound with most of the men and women sitting in separate circles chatting. There was a line of women six or so long on either side of a building all in what an American might term “their Sunday best”.   It is now just after dusk and I have yet to see my work partner.  There are groups of people sitting next to small fires, simply several sticks burning to keep a body warm for a short time and to throw a little light. Then a train of ten women walk into the compound and the third or fourth women is weeping and wailing. The novelty was when the full train arrived near the women sitting in front of the building all the women and children began to cry and wail simultaneously. The men sat somberly and the women and children mourned openly and briefly, the endeavor lasting only several minutes for the majority while a few children and women continued and did not cease as suddenly as they had begun.  The arrival of Mama Sailliou minutes later almost seemed anticlimactic after such events as I’d seen within that hour. Though as always he was polite and soft spoken and after accepting my condolences began trying to explain to me the cultural implications of what everyone was doing.  The wailing was a sort of controlled release of distress from individuals seeking comfort for their loss, and acting as a group gave solidarity and support. All interesting information but the man who was giving it to me had just lost his wife. I think the whole situation shows my Americanized sensibilities a new way of looking at things.

The new way of looking at things is verbally expressed by Senegalese and much of the Islamic world by the statement “Insh Allah” meaning ‘God willing’. In Senegal and in much of the world that has yet to be deemed ‘first world’ time has a different perception than in America and other ‘developed nations’. In America I’ve heard often “I have a meeting next week”.  The word ‘have’ in this context implies that the individual owns some part of the future.  Americans tend to think of the future as an obvious and malleable probability rather than a vague possibility. Americans say “I will see you next week” and consider it a certainty. Here in Senegal people will say “I will see you tomorrow, insh Allah”. If God agrees we will see one another tomorrow. This term is post positioned to almost every statement with regard to future events, because here there are many forces that might oppose such future planning.

Most jobs in America have strict tardiness policies stating that being late is a punishable offence. This mentality that the future is such a definite probability that if one fails to manage it they should be held accountable is considered by much of the rest of the world to be excessive. Here in Senegal within the next three hours you might become ill, get a flat tire, have a car break down, have a relative become sick, die, have a relative or friend or member of your village die, or there might be a birth, or there could be a fire, or there could be animals breaking into your garden and you need to take care of that immediately, and if you’re travelling any of these things could happen to the driver and thus it’s almost amazing that anyone manages to make it anywhere to me. Yet living in this culture makes one question their preconceived notions of time and that, to me, is wonderful. I came here to see things from a different angle and to learn crazy new things and for all the bad stuff that happens in the process I am incorporating mass amounts of new data into my worldview.

It’s just been swirling around in my head that Americans, who are so obsessed with their/our absolute control of the future, often stop just short of the final stage of life, death. It seems as though the Senegalese realize and accept this culturally. It’s rather freeing to live here because other people don’t become angry with you because you have failed to bend the future to your will. I might even call it a more realistic outlook. A guy comes to work late three times and he’s fired for not being a master of the space-time continuum.  Here you’re late and people are understanding and just kind of say… ‘shit happens’. I like it. My ideas are a bit jumbled but it’s Africa… shit happens!

Wonna Gottum

                The title is Pulaar for ‘not something’ which they interpret as ‘not the same’, and my purpose for writing is because I would like to write a bit here on some of the differences between cultures and regions. Where I have grown up and the social normalities and cultural subtleties that surrounded me for the initial part of my life are not now the ones that accompany me on my daily adventures in this environment where I presently reside.

                Prior to moving here to this West African country of Senegal I attempted to refrain from any preconceptions of what my new environment might be like. I tried to look at the situation economically. Why would I put energy into imagining something which was, in all likelihood, only sitting on the edges of possibility to accurately perceive without yet experiencing? Although try as I might some notions did creep into my mind prior to the relocation, but I remember little of them now because the solidity of the reality pushes out the preconceptions due to their misty and vague nature.

                Some interesting oddities of Pulaar are how they count money. Each increment is multiplied by 5. Buying an item that is worth 500cfca results in the shopkeeper asking for 100, and similarly 200 would be stated for an object costing 1000cfca. As one can imagine translating the numbers of a new language into their own familiar language and then multiplying and then translating back is a hassle and double so when anything purchased from a vendor that doesn’t have a permanent stand or building should be bargained over. This means that multiple numbers are being thrown around and will need to be multiplied in order to keep track of the bargain price each step of the way. The exceedingly nice thing about this region is that everything is very inexpensive. Typically the only thing I could want to buy is food and I can only really do that when at my road town 7km from my village. Most singular food items are less than 200cfca and larger quantities are still less than 800cfca. The transfer rate for fcfa and American dollar is 450cfca to 1 dollar. So I can buy a nice breakfast of a bean and egg sandwich with mayonnaise and a local tea which I enjoy, called kinkilliba, for about 80 cents American. The bigger cities have prices which run more along the lines of a modern European or American city.
               The language of Pulaar also has some interesting grammatical oddities. Articles, the a/an, for English are of 23 different varieties in Pulaar. The article for sun in Pulaar is different than the article for body. The sun = naange nge and the body is bandu ndu. The repetitive ending is often times the article but not always. Since some words do not follow the 'just use the ending' rule you actually have to know what the article is for every noun if you want to say it correctly. One specifically annoying component of the language is that almost every noun has a singular form and a plural form that is so different it is unrecognizable. This results in the necessity that one must learn almost twice as much vocabulary for Pulaar as one would for English. Here are some examples; Dog/dogs = Rawandu/dawaadi, Week/weeks = yontere/jonte, Man/men = gorko/worbe, woman/women = debbo/rowbe. Some words need only to have ji added, such as baby/babies = bobo/boboji, but mostly this applies to words derived from a foreign language; ie. bebe-bobo. 

                A rather peculiar sight in Senegal is the affectionate touching and hand holding that takes place between members of the same sex. When viewed in the light that homosexuality is illegal in this country it makes the subject quite thought provoking. Do people feel comfortable demonstrating affection because they know that anything more is forbidden so any attention is purely platonic, or did the high degree of same sex affection arise separately from the law forbidding only homosexuality? A common sight in this country is for young men to be walking down the street holding hands. Men that would, in America, be almost defiantly opposed to the slightest implication of any homosexual behavior on their behalf. Watching these events are one thing but you have to remember that I live here now and for a time, and that anything the locals do among themselves they will also perceive as perfectly acceptable to do with me. So often among children and young males they will try to hold hands with me or be otherwise very close physically and due to my American notions I often do not find these interactions comfortable. I think this is less because of the homosexual perception and more that I am unaccustomed to anyone touching me at all so it feels odd when anyone does.

                On the note of human interactions hospitality and neighborly conduct is perceived vastly differently here than in America. Multiple times I have been asked by people I don’t know to come and eat with them while just walking down the road. You might pass this off as an unusual greeting that lacked true intent but in reality either of those times I could have accepted and walked into a random person’s compound and eaten a meal with their family. One of the five tenants of Islam is to give alms which can be done in the form of food or money for the poor. But the actions I have observed thus far have been more than the commands of their theistic ideologies. People here are willing to share everything they have with complete strangers. I’ve heard many stories of other volunteers being stranded in a strange place for a night and a simple question of ‘hey can you help me out tonight?’ led to a bed and warm meal from a stranger. I know that some families have hardly enough for themselves but walking around anywhere near mealtime means you will be bombarded by the request to come and eat "Ar nyam". The concept is odd because in America we think that if anyone tries to share then you attract individuals that would rather leech on the generous than generate anything. I often wonder what the real percentage of leeches would be if America tried this sharing mentality.

                A most interesting part about living in any part of the world that isn't America is that so many people are bilingual or more multilingual than 2 or 3. Many people here know 3 languages and parts of several others. I know my perceptions upon arriving here is that to be taught only one language almost cripples an individual. I’m trying to pick up Pulaar to use in my village and French to use in the bigger cities that speak primarily Wolof and French, but at my age the brain is less adept at ingesting a new language. Honestly it seems my brain is only programmed to work in one language while my new neighbors are more flexible. One of the most difficult things I have run into is when someone says a sentence to me and one word is in butchered English or French (of which I only know a tiny amount). My brain is working so hard to try and focus on all the Pulaar words I know that partially misspoken English words just kill my understanding of the whole sentence. After these experiences I want my kid/s to be bilingual at least, hopefully I’ll be adept enough with French eventually to teach them myself. Funny tidbit one of the gentlemen from my group has lived his whole life in France and made it into the American Peace Corps only because his mother is American and he is in possession of dual citizenship. The thing I was proud of is that he has several times complimented my accent when I attempt French within his hearing.

                I guess the last little fun differential I shall give you all for now is public transportation. If you want to go somewhere you first get to the ‘garage’ of the city you are in. To get to the garage you just wait on the side of the road for a taxi and tell it to take you to the garage, or you walk. When there you find a vehicle headed to your destination. There are tons of seven passenger cars that travel faster but are more expensive than the slower modes. These sept-places as they are called run from the departure to destination typically without stopping to pick up passengers. There are 15-24 passenger vans that depart and pick up anyone on the side of the road who flags it down before it is full and they get off whenever they want. This makes most journeys on them quite slow as you tend to stop frequently. There are also a handful of night busses that are what you would consider a standard concord coach in America and they run mostly at night but will run during the day as well. They are on the expensive side but quite comfortable in comparison to the other means of transport. If you are out in the middle of nowhere and desire transportation you must find a main road and wait for one of the busses to drive by and just flag it down and tell them your destination. Also bags that you do not intend to keep on your lap (which may be several based on how lightly you travel) you need to bargain for the price of carrying the bag on top of the vehicle or in a trunk space. This is because the driver will keep an eye on bags that have been paid for to ensure that they are not stolen. Lastly each vehicle looks as if it had set in a junkyard for 10 years before the owner decided to try and drive it. Finding a taxi with a non-broken windshield is somewhat of a rarity and all passengers are in constant peril of flat tires, engine failure, or some form of accident due to the utter lack of both road rules and any formalized driving education. Fun times though.

                Here are some random fun facts that didn’t quite require a full paragraph. People here do not use toilet paper. They keep water near the bathroom and use the left hand and water to rinse. I prefer keeping a bar of soap VERY close to my bathroom, being a literal hole in the ground. Some more fancy places actually have a porcelain ‘turkish’ toilet, basically a fancy hole in the ground that sorta flushes if water goes down it and has a place for you to stand. As the left hand is often… ‘unclean’ it is impolite to hand or accept anything to anyone with that hand. Similarly it is extremely impolite to eat with one’s left hand. People here eat with their right hand out of a large community bowl. Meals are prepared to a texture that can be scooped and formed into a ball then placed in the mouth. Typically 3-12 people sit around each bowl all eating at the same time. Greetings are also another difference. It is very impolite to refrain from greeting most people in a formal setting. Obviously this is non-applicable when walking down a crowded city street but if you walk into a shopkeepers or intend to speak with someone or pass by a person whom you see regularly they expect a small exchange of words before you depart or attempt to talk business with them.

                Well that’s some of the things that come to mind for interesting things and I know I’m forgetting a load of them but I’ll have time to communicate them later. Good evening ya’ll.

Heaping Helpings of Perspective

                Senegal is a country struggling to break its bonds of the old world and be counted among its ‘Developed’ sister countries, though, as of yet, it is still in need of some assistance in several areas. The desire to maintain roots in traditional living styles means close knit, and often extremely rural, village communities function as the domestic mode of living for many Senegalese. The drawbacks of such a lifestyle are that medicines and education are difficult to make readily available. Malaria is prevalent in Senegal and much of Africa. My village of Pidirou lost 4 individuals within the past year to Malaria and other such causes that might have been easily avoided with a small degree of medical education or access to medications. Yet for all which Senegal is still in needs, it has, for a first world foreigner such as me anyway, heaping helpings of perspective.

                The train of thought that led me into this quandary on perspective was initiated in a rather odd manner. During one of our stays with our Training Host Families two of my language learning compatriots and me began our short trek to the garden for its afternoon watering. On the walk we passed a rather uncharacteristically plump Senegalese man wearing sunglasses who had adopted a rather unusually relaxed pose leaning on a half wall with either arm resting on the wall behind him. As customary politeness dictates in this culture we greeted him as we passed and were then forced to turn around in surprise as he questioned us in our own English language in such an accent and manner as to remove from our minds any doubt that he could have had any other language from birth and so singularly distinct from that accent distinguishing all individuals from the Greatest of Britains.

                We held discourse for a time in front of the small mosque he had been waiting near perusing the common subjects of origin and purpose to being in a foreign country. He had seen us prior to this introduction moving back and forth to water our garden from his rooftop and was mildly curious what our purposes and occupations were.  Our friend walked with us to the garden and communicated that he was originally from Jamaica and had spent some 40 odd years as a truck driver visiting all manner of places within the United States. The man also enjoyed talking and we listened and interjected little for forty minutes while he hit on all manner of topics. The Trucker had spent his youth in Jamaica and decided to move to the States because he was tired of needing to sleep with guns under his pillows for safety, a similar mentality actually brought him to Senegal. We talked of exquisite foods which we are deprived of and his religious nature as well as the Senegalese and the lifestyles of children. Children of all ages run around the streets playing for hours with old tires, makeshift kites, and miscellaneous pieces of objects whose purposes have long since been forgotten.  In between the topics of delectable food and the meanderings of children Mr. Trucker spoke about how being in Senegal really put perspective on the blessings afforded to our mere luck in region of birth.

                After our parting we initiated our search for tree seeds as a sort of homework assignment and as if to cement the concepts of differential perspectives into my mind we met the nicest Senegalese gentlemen. While pulling seeds off some tree branches hanging over the wall of a half acre compound with barbed wire at the top a man approached us with an inquisitive air and several languages which we did not well comprehend. He seemed to beg us to wait a moment and as we were partially considering the possibility that we were to be chastised were less than keen to oblige him, but we waited and a minute later he returned with a key and unlocked the large compound, revealing it to be a large garden. Besides being large the garden was also very beautiful and well tended. Rows of bissap filled much of the empty space between the fruit trees of citrus, and guava. He gifted us a lime each and a small bucketful of dried bissap flowers for we three. After thanking him as best we could in a common language which was neither the first language of either group we departed.

                Such a day as this needed to be recalled so I wrote much of these events within a journal for future pondering, although they occur approximately a month prior to the writing of this document. Perspective is a concept which I expressly enjoy. What would be light without dark, joy without pain, relaxation without effort? Each thing, good or bad, would assume the baseline, or standard by which all other experiences were judged, and thus render them less valuable. To have the opportunity to see and experience all of the things that I do here in Senegal is so awesome because it functions to make all memories past and future actions dramatically more vibrant. Such perspective as I have gained and have yet to gain may seem exaggerated merely due to the fact that I am in Africa, but if I may be so ostentatious as to assume the role of advice distributor I would tell you that such alterations of perspective are available to you as well. Often people begrudge the mundane or difficult but without them how little would we enjoy the easy and exciting? I may be characterized as oft cheerful and comical, but this is because everything looks so fascinating and beneficial when you take a second to look at it. Doing the dishes every day is not a lowly chore it is a component of the differential in perspective that allows you to enjoy other things within your life. It is for this reason that most of the time I enjoy such things as many disdain. I like washing the dishes because then the movie I watch afterward is slightly better.

`               I think this is the first Thanksgiving I have spent away from family and my apologies to them for not being sad about it, but I find little to be upset about. I sought out the opportunity for unique experiences and have so found them. I spent this Thanksgiving with new friends making great food on the edge of the beautiful ocean and being subjected to magnificent sunsets and amazing stars. I hope lastly that a small percentage of my perspective might assist any readers in brightening up their own lives. The following pictures are some of my most favorite from these past several days on the beach. 

I think this is one of my favorite captured sights ever. 

        An ideal idea to be contemplated on, or near, Thanksgiving wouldn't you say? 

If you had my eyes.

This here is a sweet map painted on a wall in the Theis Training Center which is up near the Dakar Peninsula and where I've been doing almost all my training. After training I'm headed to Kolda in the south and I'll be living below the A and not too far from the southern border.

This is a little road we drive by each time we go to our Host Families. You can see some of the signature Boabob trees. The Senegalese use the leaves in many sauces and the fruits as well when they are ripe. Also they loosely believe that the trees hold spirits.

I liked this valley a lot. It's nice to

This is a little compound we drove by on the way to Kolda for the initial visit. Also as a stoic introduction my thoughtful buddy Scott le.

Here is some of the different countryside on the way to Kolda.

This is an excellent cow pasture/field about a kilometer southwest of my village which I very much enjoy and hope to spend many an afternoon in the grasses watching the wold go by and reading.

More of the same field.

Some rice growing near a stream a few km from my village.

One of the mornings we took a walk and saw some men harvesting millet. They step on the base to bend it over and then cut off the top and gather them into these bunches. Then pound them and eat them for dinner!

This hut to the right may be the one I'll live in for two years. Not a bad setup if ya ask me.