The Darkness before the Dawn... before the darkness.

Hello. Sorry I haven't written in literally six months. I would leave site to come into the regional capital city and relax then leave without having worked on writing. I took some videos of a brush fire moving toward my village but my computer won't recognize the file so I can't upload it yet. In the meantime we can just review some of the other things that have been happening.
        I spent several days in Dakar while doing a short medical evaluation. Nothing wrong in terms of health but did get a cleaning done at the dentist. Ordered a fantastic goat cheese and honey pizza and ate it with rootbeer. Good pizza and rootbeer are unavailable in the part of the country I live in, and I only make it to the capital city once or twice a year. I almost cried because the food was so good. Bought some clothes too. Buying clothes has always been a 'I'll do that later after I lose a little weight', but I wait so long that I only end up wearing ratty stuff. Purchased some new stuff and actually felt presentable for once, it's a nice feeling. Saw big box jellyfish in the Gambia River, neat. Haven't been ill, also neat. Hot season has come and is now even on it's way out getting replaced soon by rainy season. It's no fun to be unable to fall asleep unless you are outside because inside is too hot. Upon returning from Dakar which is on a coastal peninsula and excellently chilly I was dehydrated for days until I realized that's what my headache meant. Then I spent a few days consuming liters of oral re-hydration salts before 11am. I don't remember much memorable happening up until the last few weeks, but I've been working and trying to get stuff done like a demon now.
       With rainy season on the approach farmers should be planting trees and letting them grow a bit before moving them to their future homes in fields during the rainy season. So I've been going around asking people if they want cashew or mango trees (because those seeds are available), and then helping them get started. Step one is to ask who wants them, then I'm telling them to gather the dirt. If I see dirt I'll give tree sacks and show them how to fill them. If they are filled upon my next visit I give seeds. This is necessary because last year many people wanted seeds to just throw in the ground after rains start, but then they're too small to survive the dry season. So I'm running around biking to a neighboring village 3km away every several days. The people there seem much more motivated than those in my own village though, not sure what the presence of a volunteer does but it seems to detract from people's motivation the more people think they have access to you.
       Been pushing the moringa still, the healthy tree. Had Scott Le and Randi Rumbold come through my site to do a demonstration and education lesson for moringa. Then only a few days ago I brought my village workpartner and three women to a training on commercialization of moringa powder. I'm hoping to do what I did last year and dispense a great quantity of moringa seed. I tried to give out a lot last year but much of it was put in places that goats and chickens and sheep just killed it. So this year I'll make sure to avoid that and some other problems.
       Worked with my new sitemate(person whose site is nearest your own) on doing a girls scholarship program. Met with teachers and nine girls from 13-16 to write short essays on the roles of women and ask questions about home and school. Hopefully when school resumes in October they will each have the ten dollar yearly school fee covered and be given ten dollars worth of notebooks, pens, school supplies, and a backpack. Girls are chosen if they have good grades and a financial need.
       My language has gotten better. I think it's because I've been in site for almost a month without leaving and coming to the city for long periods of time. I feel comfortable talking to people about most stuff and if I don't understand I can ask and follow an explanation. Feeling competent in a second language is really an amazing feeling. It has helped me greatly with work and explaining why things should be done and how. Last year I'd say we should do this or that and someone would reply 'nah I wanna do it this way', and I didn't have the depth to convince them otherwise.
        Not everything is peachy keen. I am not a loud person, or confrontational, but I yelled at someone as loud as I could for whipping her son. He'd done something to upset her and she hit him, which is acceptable, but then she called him to come over and eat lunch. This kid is 4, and she told him to sit and eat, another 20 something guy is telling him to listen or he'll hit him too. The kid sits at the bowl and just holds his hand over it. She keeps telling him to eat but he obviously can't eat cause he's crying too hard and people have just been yelling at him for the last 20 minutes. She grabs a little 2 foot stick, quite thin too, and hits him a few times. A 12yo boy that lives with us actually tries to defend him from some of the blows and says it's enough. I agree and say to no one particular that the 4yo isn't going to eat lunch. The mother tells him to get up and pulls him a few meters away and just starts hitting him as much as she can wherever he's exposed(not head though). People start shouting at her that it's enough, including myself. The 14yo girl that lives with us also gets up and takes the kid away from her and brings him to the other side of the compound. Some other people come over and all start telling her that that was too much. I've never really liked this woman, she's always rough towards kids. Once she asked for someone to bring out a complet(set of clothing) for her baby and the child did exactly as asked. She then berated the kid who brought it to her verbally for no reason that I could discover, referencing the clothing and that it was incorrect. Once when a woman returned to the village for a visit I asked why this other woman had returned and she told me, while laughing, that it was because her husband beat her. That's what happens here, if a man beats his wife she returns to her family for a little while, then goes back to his place. The man who lives in the hut opposite mine within our compound is very harsh with his kids. I'm quite certain a large black eye his daughter had was given by him, although she told me she was stung by a bee. He's harsh with his son, who is really a good kid, but on more than one occasion I've seen him very fearful of his father. Not even just people that have it rough. Kids beat animals for no reason. They don't seem to understand that a smack is sufficient. I recently saw a kid take a long stick and do an overhead strike to a young dog that was lying down doing absolutely nothing. Donkey's are beaten for doing nothing at all. Someone had the brilliant idea that if you tied two of a horses legs together, front left to back left for example, that when removed the horse would run faster. All this does however is ruin the hips and kill the animal at least 5 years earlier than necessary. I watched a donkey get hit by a truck last week. Wasn't moving super fast and didn't kill the donkey but when I saw the donkey a few days later its back leg was swollen at the joint. On my way to the moringa training I saw a smooshed dog and ten km later a young dog lying on the side of the road dead. When waiting for the moringa training I saw three dogs fighting, then realized it was two dogs basically killing a monkey. A kid chased off the dogs but when I returned at midday the monkey was dead. The worst thing about any of this is that it is moving into my perception as normality, and I don't want that. Aid workers in other countries often end up so callused and indifferent it becomes hard to care.
       Then sometimes caring without being informed just makes it worse. Upon learning that female genital cutting happens in this country I was prepared to inform my community 'Stop or I leave'. But what the hell did I know about what actually was going on? Nothing. Turns out there are tons of LEVELS to female genital cutting. The demonized version is a removal of all external parts; labia, clitoris, everything, and then sometimes the hymen is sown even more shut to discourage sexual behavior prior to marriage. The thing is that this is what we westerners think ALL LEVELS actually are, so we try to do everything we can to stop it. But check this, a great woman who works for Peace Corps here and does women's empowerment training and such gave us an insight. When she was a young woman all the older women would exclude her and say 'no you aren't part of our group'. So she tried and tried and eventually the older women said 'very well how would you like to be part of our group'. She and several others were initiated with a ceremony that (PAY ATTENTION) made a small cut on the clitoris and took a drop of blood. Then she was educated briefly on sexuality and what would happen upon marriage and invited into this women's group where should could ask questions and learn about being a woman. Since the west has begun it's uninformed zealous attempt to eliminate all forms of female genital cutting many groups have simply moved all such practices to very young girls, babies. This is more dangerous for the child and also means that all the education and background information are never brought up. Without the foreknowledge and zero organized sex education young girls are quite frighteningly vulnerable. An older male invites them into a room, offers money, it is accepted and then the male asks what he may get in return. What arguments can a poorly educated 14 year old girl make to a older male, especially in a culture which puts even male children above adolescent women, making it very disrespectful to decline requests. Certainly there are bad things that happen, but we have to be careful about how we deal with them.
       I have five months left here. I don't know if I'll come out the kind and caring Dali Lama kind of person I was hoping to become, but for better or worse it's coming. I just read an exquisite book by Barbara Kingsolver called The Poisonwood Bible. HIGHLY recommend to anyone with a little free time. It's an easy to get through fiction about a family that goes to the Congo in the sixties to do missionary work. Tons of parallels to my experiences here. One of the characters simply doesn't feel that she can return home because it would all be so false and ignorant about how much of the world lives. I wonder this for myself sometimes, will I be able to reintegrate to my old lifestyle knowing what happens 'out there'. I'm sure I will because I have video games and friends that will help me to not think about it, but is that what I want, to just not think about it? I'm a pretty clever person so I don't anticipate any huge problems, but I do expect to have lingering side effects. Five months... Just do my work day by day and try to make the attempt to offer informed help. Get to know people in my village better, that kind of stuff. My most excellent work partner who does exactly what a work partner should and is the nicest guy and smart and everything, a few days back his mother passed. Was only last year that one of his wives passed. It's real though. Real isn't only what's real for you. There are other realities out here too.

Vacation?!

Recently the opportunity to return home and visit family and friends after my 15 month absence arose, so I reluctantly agreed. Kidding, returning home was optional and I much enjoyed the change of pace. The change of pace being altering my daily schedule from waking up at sunrise and working all day in the fields and sun to waking up at 3pm because I played computer games all night and slept on Elizan’s couch during the day. My family did get to see me for a short while, but don’t worry family because I’ll be back in 11 months!

Five months prior to returning I was reluctant to make the trip home. At that point I’d been in Senegal for around 10 months and was in a bit of a slump because all of my projects were in their baby stages and I was uncertain and felt unaccomplished. I could only think of myself sitting at the countertop in my grandmother’s house eating a toasted tuna fish and celery sandwich having light conversation with family. Then while sitting there the idea that I needed to return to my hut and continue living the way I had would enter my head make returning a dreadful experience. I wasn’t sure I wanted to return because to go home and dread coming back can all be avoided by simply not going back. That was all vague projections of how I might feel though, and as the time ebbed away I started getting things done and the dread being trapped in comfort and niceties faded.  

On December 15th at 2am I boarded a plane serving sandwiches and breakfast ham(ham… that thing you don’t get to eat in most Islamic countries). Some of the flight and the long trip from my remote village to the airport was used daydreaming about eating corndogs and fast food, bakery goods and sushi. Mentally reviewing what I wanted to do first and that sort of thing. When I did finally touchdown at my final destination my mother and grandmother were waiting all teary eyed. We greeted and exchanged some hugs before heading out to get the car. Not having driven in 15 months I naturally took the keys and proclaimed myself chauffeur. Little know that my first cultural failure awaited me. As we left the parking lot the attendant was owed $4 so I began handing the money out the window, then my Senegal training kicked in and said “CANNOT HAND PEOPLE THINGS WITH LEFT HAND!” so I awkwardly tried to twist around with my right hand, take the money from my left hand and then hand it to the attendant. That was the only noticeable thing I think I did, minus asking people how their families were.

First stop after picking up gram back at the terminal was a grocery store. I’d loved walking around grocery stores before I left for Senegal. I’d walk around and look at all the options and try to think of all the tasty things I could make with so many options, sometimes for 45 min or so while only needing to pick up several things. The pull to return as my first objective was to meander around again looking at the options but having an entirely new level of appreciation. I had fun in the produce section looking at some of the tropical fruits now being privy to how they grow, and naming them in pulaar to my mom. Picked up some eggnog, and a few snacks for the trip home then headed to SUSHI! Met up with some of my Karate instructors at the closest sushi place to my house(150 miles away) and tasted the deliciousness once again over some great conversation. Wrapped up dinner and began the 2.5 hour drive home. Was having a great amount of difficulty staying awake during the last twenty minutes of the trip but still ended up playing games on my computer for 3 hours before going to sleep.

My first week back was a raging storm of meeting all the new babies, catching up with family, and playing games with my friends until 6am. Aliyah, my new niece, is a little bundle of funny stuff, sticking that tongue out and looking like her dad. Michael, my new nephew, is so consistently happy it’s hard to not think he’s the Dalai Lama reincarnate. Ate good food here and there. Oddly I wasn’t very hungry. I would eat a meal and then be content for most of the remainder of the day. Another interesting thing was all the daydreaming I’d done about corn dogs and unhealthy food was completely negated by something new. I would look at something that I wanted mentally and have zero desire to eat it. I attributed this to a familiarity with how foods affect my body. In Senegal if you eat something and it disagrees with you it is much easier to remember what it was. So while home I ended up eating fast food one time and unhealthy stuff like chips and sweets very little. I took a 5 hour road trip to see some friends and my grandmother and every time I stopped for food picked up sandwiches and milks rather than sodas and chips or candy as had been my previous go to on car rides. If anything I’ll be thankful for the alteration in eating habits this voyage has had on me.

I asked my dad if we could go ice fishing at some point during my escapades home. We took a Sunday and drove to camp early in the morning to try and catch a few fish. Arrived and had to plow out the drive, which was a bit iced over and hard to move. Then had trouble with the gas lines because some pieces were forgotten. Ended up running the propane stove and it’s burners to heat the small building on the edge of the lake. Got out the ice auger(drill) and that didn’t want to run. So we were removing the spark plug and putting gas in the cylinder directly, trying to start it, failing, trying again, until the thing actually worked. Went out onto the ice and drilled the ten holes in the ice which was over 1 foot thick. Halfway through drilling the ten holes was when I reflected on how cold it was and that I may have made some bad choices. Double so considering I’ve been living in hot ole Senegal. Next was getting bait though. A 25 min drive north to discover our bait salesman was closed. Return to the nearby down and ask around, the new bait sellers are close to the old one… 25 min back the way we just came. So do that again. Finally return to camp and get our bait all in the water around 11 am. Then a nice reheated beef stew for lunch while watching the windows de-ice so we can see the lake and our traps. Snowing, sometimes heavier sometimes lighter, fading in and out the trees on the opposite side of the lake. Just enough flags on our traps to have a little fun but not become tired from walking in and out to them constantly. The end of the day found us with only a few crap fish and several salmon that were returned because of size limitations. At the end of the day I was very tired from lugging stuff around and trying to put up with the cold(something I hadn’t needed to do for the past 15 months), but otherwise very happy to have spent the day with my dad playing cards and driving around on crazy bait finding adventures.

During my vacation I also felt the desire to show some of the high school kids from my hometown that there were interesting options available with a life sciences oriented education. My original purpose was to talk with the biology and agricultural sciences classes about what I’d been doing to show them some options. I was also asked in to speak to some civics classes since they had recently review the Peace Corps and volunteerism. So I prepared a picture based presentation about what I did, why I chose to do it, and some interesting dynamics about living in another culture. I spoke for 2 days to 13 classes at the high school and was told after that the kids loved it because they were quiet during the presentation, and still talked about it several days after I left. The option was available for me to sleep all day, play computer games, and ignore everyone else, guess I’m a  bad misanthrop.

Before returning I’d heard stories of volunteers having mini panic attacks in malls or becoming overwhelmed by too many stimulus. There was also the slight chance that everything would simply ‘feel weird’ and not like home. I didn’t expect these to be challenges for me because I’ve always lived primarily inside of my head. I think of it like carrying your house around with you at all times. The way I’ve constructed my worldview is the right amount of ‘don’t care’ and ‘whatever’ that, to a great extent, I’m not really bothered by where I am or what’s going on around me. I also like to play games and do things requiring me to process information quickly or keep my eyes on many targets at once so being in crowds, while unfamiliar to the country bumpkin volunteer, isn’t overwhelming because I have continued it in my personal hobbies. I write most of this paragraph to enlighten the question “How does it feel being back?” Honestly I felt as though I’d been gone two weeks. I was able to slide back into what I’d been doing with great ease. I started doing the things which brought me joy 15 months ago and the transition was incredibly smooth for me. I have different experiences and I’m sure that there are differences in who I am and my reactions to things, but I felt the same. Being back didn’t even feel like ‘being back’, it felt like I hadn’t left.

Then of course the time to return to Senegal came around. I did have the desire to return, unfinished projects, good friends and adventures awaiting. The opportunity to continue practicing martial arts and reading all those philosophy books that don’t show up in all the cat videos on youtube where I keep looking for them. Went to Bangor to catch my first flight and had the last meal of Hibachi scallops. Woke up at 4:00 and started packing up the bits and pieces so we could go to the airport. Arrived to find that my first of 4 flights had been cancelled and the next one would put me where I needed to be 45 min after the flight there had left. Stayed calm though and waited in the line and once I got to the desk it turned out there was a flight to my second destination completely bypassing my first destination, also I would arrive there much sooner than intended. Then I had to get a shuttle from Laguardia to Newark and that took two hours. Interestingly if the shuttle had taken two hours on my original schedule I would have spent the remaining 15 minutes in a TSA line and missed that flight. So… good bad things? Anyway I made it to the flight over the Atlantic. Watched a movie and then slept the rest of the way. Arrived in Dakar and tried to get a taxi to the garage. Was having fun trying to speak french to the driver and was able to greet him in his language of Serer. Thought it was nice being back and happy that I’d be out of Dakar soon. Couldn’t quite figure out what it was but there’s something slower and more personal about being here. Then of course things got worse, as they do.

Arrive at the garage, exit car with my first bag and give the driver the 2,000 cfa I thought we agreed upon. He looked disgusted and threw it on the seat like it was going to give him ebola. Apparently ‘dou mil’ had been interpreted by him as ‘dix mil’ and instead of 4 dollars he wanted 20. To put it in perspective the 14km ride to the garage he wanted me to pay the same as the next ride I’d be taking across the entire country of Senegal, about 600km. I told him I wasn’t a tourist and that was ridiculous but to get him to let go of my bag and not be such a huge asshole I did end up throwing down a few more bills up to around 9 dollars. I had thought being back would be all smooth and nice… but nope, can’t get away without a huge dick of a taxi driver in Dakar. At the garage I did fine though. Bought my ticket to Tamba and waited for the car to fill up. Then began the fun 9 hour journey cramped in the back with my legs in a horrible position as the other two guys in the back were bigger than me. Hadn’t gotten a good quality of sleep on the plane and I can’t sleep in cars well either so it was a long trip. Also didn’t get to find food until about 1pm and the last time I’d eaten was 8pm the previous day on the cross Atlantic flight.

Arrived in Tamba at 5:40 pm thinking I’d likely end up sleeping at the Tamba regional house until the next day. I asked around and a car did plan to leave  to kolda though, if it filled up. So I bought my ticket there and wiated. Eventually three guys walked over to me and one of them started talking to me in french. Then the old, “Sorry I don’t know French, talk to me in Pulaar.” So he gave me the verbal itinerary for the two guys he brought with me. I just kept agreeing and saying ok while having no idea why he was talking to me. Then one of them started talking to me in English and they apparently couldn’t understand any of the local languages but had asked for English, so the garage attendant had brought them to me for translation. It was a fun first thing to have to do, playing translator, after having not used Pulaar in three weeks. So we spent a while figuring out what they wanted and what was available. Then they both wanted to shave for some reason. So we found them a barber close by. While they were at the barber a Gendarme (like a military police guy) came up and started talking and yelling with the attendant. After a minute I was like ‘Oh crap, this guy is looking for those other two guys and they just went to get shaved so he wouldn’t recognize them!’ Then a guy comes back completely freshly shaven and is looking at the guard and me a little suspiciously. I started to get a little freaked until the guy I thought he was returns having not shaved at all and he doesn’t seem to care about the guard. Turned out the guard was yelling at the driver and stuff to buy his own ticket… Anyway after some ladies finally agreed on their baggage price we loaded up and were ready to leave. Turns out my two English speaking guys were from Nigeria and they were nice enough to buy me a dinner sandwich because I’d helped them out so much.

We made it pretty far for all the roadblocks we met. Each time the guard in the front would put  on his beret and talk to the guards at the roadblock and we’d get to keep going. Our luck ran out at midnight when the roadblock at my own road town wouldn’t let us through. So I took the key to my neighboring volunteers hut and went and slept there until 5am. Then returned to the blockade to await it’s opening. We started out at 6:30am and I got into Kolda at 8. Two days and an early morning later I was back in familiar territory and happy to be done traveling, saw some friends and felt very comfortable in my surroundings. It’s no fun to not be able to speak to the people around you.  Had a few adventures, a few challenges and all ended up good enough. But that’s why you join Peace Corps or live outside the U.S., for crazy stuff like that which you have figure out how to overcome. Here or there, challenges come up and you take em or you fail and have to try again. C’est la vie. That is life.

A Little Success

            I’ve been stuck in the city for a week due to illness and now that I feel better it seemed a good time to do some writing. Alluding to an illness without explaining would be poor decorum though. So, last week I awoke with a light fever and a sore throat and headache. I stayed in bed until about 10 a.m. before deciding that I’d be better off recovering in the city rather than my hut. Firstly because of all the good food and electricity driven fans and ice water available. Secondly because Fula culture dictates that if someone is ill everyone should go into that persons room and ask them if they are sick and then wait a few hours before repeating. During the time when you would least like to talk almost every single person in your village in your second language because all you want to do is rest… you have to talk to everyone in your village in your second language. So I packed up and headed into the city.
            The travel in turned out to be a fun(haha sarcasm to the extreme) adventure as well. The hour I waited at the road brought me no success of a random car heading in the direction I wanted. So I had to pay 1,000cfa (2 dollars) to travel 20km in the wrong direction to get to the nearest garage. At the garage I paid an additional 2,500cfa(5 dollars) to travel 80km back the way I’d come. Although this car wasn’t full and I had to wait for two hours, while still being fevery and generally unwell. Although I did meet a nice family who let me use their outdoor duce while I waited. Our 3 hour trip into the city was held up on two occasions. Once because a truck driver decided the middle of a one lane road with zero place to driver around him was the best place to stop. A second time because someone needed to borrow a tire iron. I’m not entirely sure because I was focusing on not overheating and dying in the back of the car when it stopped and consequently stopped the airflow. Made it into the city at 5:30 p.m., a nice six and a half our endeavor which should have taken under 4.
            Anyway I arrived in the city to a fun power outage and found my fever to be on the rise. By the time I called our medical team I was near 103 degrees Fahrenheit. I took also the malaria rapid test to ensure that a fun bout of malaria wasn’t the cause of my discomfort. Negative. So med suspected strep throat and prescribed an antibiotic and pain killers to reduce fever. I’ve since spent some unpleasant days coughing and being out of energy. Although honestly I would easily have gone twice as long with all that if I could have given up an insufferable canker-sore at the end of my right canine tooth. I couldn’t move or eat or drink without the tooth digging into the sore and just driving me mad. Six days of both of these things and I’m feeling energetic again.     

            Now for the reason I wanted to write, some successful projects I’ve done. The first project I did about four months ago. Went around my village helping people plant Moringa seeds in 2 ft. spaced patterns. Moringa is a rapidly growing tree when given enough water. It contains excellent quantities of protein, calcium, vitamin c, and other hard to come-by nutritious goodies. The leaves are a valued cooking additive and the tree itself is difficult to kill. Also you can cut the tree and it will regrow. Even better you can use the cut portions and plant them in the ground and those will grow. So if I can get just a few started and teach people how to care for it then in a few years we can just make its numbers around the village blow up. 

 As you can see a few short months and these trees are about 2m tall.

 Kumba holding her little one. Kumba had also been growing corn here, so some of the nutrients and water that would have gone to the moringa were siphoned off. Yet the moringa will outlive the corn by a great many years we hope!

 Two little jokesters that I pulled into my camera work with a few of the trees splattered about.

 Another fantastic looking bed of moringa, sorry I didn't pull somebody in for scale.

Here are some younger girls at my work partners compound among the few moringa that lived thus far.

            Another fun project I’ve been working on is the Michelle Sylvester Scholarship. This project involved going to a neighboring village’s school(the one in my village is the equivalent to an elementary school) and helping teenage girls pay for inscription fees and school supplies. First the school supplied us(a nearby volunteer helped me a little) with a list of the top ten preforming girls, several from each grade(they would be early high school equivalents I think). Each of the girls wrote a short essay on a question of their choice, referencing the advancement of women in society or the importance of education. Next I went to their compounds and(with the help of a French/English/Pulaar speaking teacher) asked them questions about their home life. Questions like; if they planned to continue schooling in the event of marriage, or if their family had difficulty paying for schooling, or what they aimed to be after school. Next all the paperwork was gathered up and sent out. A few weeks back I received the twenty dollars for each girl. Ten went to inscription fees and ten I was instructed to use on purchasing school supplies; backpacks, pens, pencils, notebooks, and a math kit for each of the scholarship recipients. Here is a fuzzy picture of us (Sorry mom but my camera has a grain of sand in the focus and is hard to work, meaning that I’m the only one who can work it, which is why there are no GOOD pictures of me.)

            This project revealed some of the sadder elements to the culture here as well. When asking the girls what they wanted to be when they finished school the answer was almost always doctor, police officer, or teacher. This might not be a bad thing to aim for, but they are practically the only professions available. When you talk to young women the answers given are obviously(most of the time) only what they believe you want to hear. In multiple young people empowerment gatherings I've been to a strong willed successful woman will ask the younger girls what occupation they desire. Many of these are answered with silence until a frew options are given as a prompt, and then the one heard most recently is spouted off as the asnwer because it is perceived as the correct answer. Now this saddens me on two fronts. Firstly because the way educatoin is handled here(and to some extent Stateside) is to elicite fact regurgitation and ignore critical thinking. Classes here consist mostly of the teacher saying something and then every child in the class yelling it out loud repeatedly.(to be covered in next post hopefully). Secondly I'm upset by this because not everyone needs to be a doctor or teacher. Nothing at all wrong with an ambition to be a parent or farmer. If everybody is a teacher or a doctor then where will all the shop keepers, mechanics, and farmers be? The point of the question is what do you want to do to make you happy, but the true meaning is sidelined not only in Senegal but often in the U.S. as well.
            I’ve also been working on getting people started on seedlings of a couple types of fruit trees. To occupy my dry season time and before the big workhorse seeds of mango and cashew are ripe, I’ve been working guava, citrus, and papaya. I walk around telling people that these seeds will be ripe very shortly and if anyone wants one or two or twenty of these trees let me know and I’ll help them start and care for everything until they are adults. So people ask for one or two guava trees or papaya trees and then I give them tree sacks to fill and get ready and then I’ll return to their compound with seeds when the seeds are ready later on. One of my practice runs of this project has already yielded… this tiny guava tree pepineer(French for tree nursery I think?) Also I do not own this or take care of it, purely Senegalese gorwing and learning happening right there.

           Now  how about some other little pictures of stuff and then goodnight.

            This youngster was out collecting bissap flowers. They are heated in a little water and a good deal of sugar and the red and flavor leak out making a colorful and tasty beverage. Also corn season being in the swing you'll notice a few discarded husks and cobs.

            The youngster on the left is one of my work partners kids and his wife Mariama is in the background picking bitter tomato(look it up). The bitter tomato leaves have wood ash on them to keep away insects and I don't know if my village was doing this prior to my arrival or not. I had showed one of the prominent male gardeners and women from all over the village love to go to his well and get water because the longer walk gives them a little break but also becuase it's shallow and they have a chance socialize. While being next to the garden they may have asked him about his use of wood ash to protect plants. I don't know if what I did there spread or if people already knew this though?

Lastly I love clouds and boabobs. Scenes like this will be one of the things I'll miss the most when I'm flying back home for good just under ONE YEAR FROM NOW! Have a good day everybody.

Photo Feast

          I regret to inform readers that while I am not much interested in writing a traditional styled entry today. Therefore I shall be using this decent internet I purchased for 2 dollars to upload a great many photos and write little stories or things about them. I'll even try to categorize for yah!

My hang out.

 This is my backyard very early on during my service. It was dry season so lugging water back there to keep the plants alive isn't really all that fun. Plus I'd been working elsewhere.

The nice thing though, is that during rainy season you can plant all kinds of stuff and have it grow like crazy. Here I have beans, okra, bissap, mango and cashew seedlings, the trees are moringa, some squash and cucumbers are visible. Don't know if my watermelons are visible but everything is much bigger as I write than it was a few months back when I took this photo. The tree in the back right is related to beans and puts out a neat bean pod looking thing which can be cooked and eaten just the same as beans. Also there's my Karate striking post which I use daily. If you start off slowly it kills/dulls the nerves in your knuckles. Then you can hit it a little harder and it creates microfractures in your bones which scar over and bone scars are quite dense and hard.
My environment.

In contrast to the back of my hut this is a photo from Thies, the larger city where I did most of my training early on in service. Obviously this is a little negative on account of all the trash, but it was what I wanted to get across. Without a waste management system, much of the cityscape is varying degrees of this sort. The railroad is more of a dumping area than markets or homes but walking around anything but very rural villages and you'll see something similar.

 A favorite part about rainy season is the seasonal riverbed less than 1km from my village. It's beautiful for several months.

 The same.

 Within the river bed are some fishing nets. One day for dinner my family cut up an catfish looking thing and I was a little reluctant to consume it knowing it originated from this close to village(being that field pesticides and herbicides travel downhill same as rain). While the fishballs that are made do not typically appeal to me, I sampled these and swear to you that, even without seasoning, they tasted like sausage. Sad I only got to try it once.

 I love this picture because while standing here I felt all mystical and magical. As though I were in some Lord of the Rings adventure or looking at a swamp/forrest mana card from Magic the Gathering.

 Rainy season also means RICE! and lots of it. The reason for taking this photo was also to show the ingredients to my favorite dish. Rice and foleree with palm oil.

 Sorry I couldn't figure out how to turn this, but it's Okra. You can see a little one growing about center frame.

 This here is bissap. To make my favorite dish the rice is cooked and then ground up okra and bissap leaves are made into a mildly slimy and salty leaf sauce. Next palm oil is put around the edge of the dish. One could make palm oil from(I believe) crushing the nuts the tree produces.

 One afternoon as another volunteer and I were headed to my roadtown I commented that it looked like rain. As rainy season is on it's way out the other volunteer dismissed my conjecture. After loading a bus and heading back to their village I restated my hypothesis to myself and bike the 7km/4mile back to village as fast as I could so that this scene could great me. As beautiful as it is, I still caught several raindrops as I took the corner into my compound. Also it's harvest season and you will notice that the sorghum has been bent over and harvested in half of this field.

Biking back to village from another volunteers site about a week back brought me to this excellent sunrise. Then of course I had to turn and try to get to site about 3km away before it became dark and stranded me in the woods.
Critters and crawlers.

 This was the first scorpion I had seen in real life. I was walking and noticed it about two yards away and just froze. After a few seconds of it not moving and looking all dead I figured it was dead, turned out it was. So I took the opportunity to study it like any good science oriented person. Fascinating. Wish I could have examined it when it was alive. I've seen about 5 total. Most dead. The one that was alive was being flung at children, by other children. Ho ho ho, kids these days.

 This is a spider I found(almost with my face) while out wandering in the woods. It interested me because of its spiny body. The hand is present merely for contrast.

 This giant cricket cousin was behind my hut making the loudest cricket noise ever. It literally hurt my ears it was so loud up close. Though very cool.

 I noticed within a bush there was a little beetle and wanted to examine him closer. Here he is! I like his horn.

Although after looking at the beetle for several seconds I noticed that the bottom of the plant he was on looked like this and that it's head was about 5 inches from my foot. So I moved back a little even though he was only about 17 inches long. Lil cutie.

People!

 Sorry Ruble for the less than flattering picture. But here are some photos of the village wedding held by Jenny Cobb and her fiance Jake Castillo.

 Here we have Jenny(Hoolay as her village calls her) pre makeup and dress. The hand art? is a local leaf that when dried, ground up, and soaked in water stains skin. Women primarily use it on hands and feet to make designs like temporary henna tattoos in the states.

 J squared coming out for the big reveal.

 You know, it's a wedding sorta. I don't understand them nomatter what continent they're on.

So the Senegalese favorite dish is ceeb(pronounced cheb) and usually fish but also meat sometimes. Hoolay found a nice goat willing to be eaten and here is some of the early prep work of pouring the oil into the rice cooking bowl. Obviously most meals are not cooked on such large pots, but this was a party and people like to eat!

 You can see some of the rice mid cooking and a bowl of chopped onions. The two women are getting ready to pound something. The straight face is a popular expression among younger Senegalese. I asked my host brother why kids didn't smile when he was photographing them for his work and he said because they didn't want to. The morter pestle combo is called the unugol and korngol in pulaar. The stick being the unugol and the bowl the korngol.

 Matching outfits!

Sometimes I like to just come into the regional house and make up my own breakfast. Here we've got some nice sweet potato hash with very fluffy scrambled eggs and tomatoes basil and onions with a little cheese covering, not forgetting the essential glass of chocolate milk. Peace out!

Yes, but what do you actually do?

          I was informed that while I have given great detail over many aspects of my adventure in Senegal one topic that has been neglected is what I do on a daily basis. You can see how this would slip my mind because what I wake up and do daily is rather uninteresting to me and seems mundane, but since you aren’t me, you may be far more interested in such things. So, for today the treat has arrived of what work I am filling my time with while here in AFRICA!

           My job title is Agroforestry volunteer. Agroforestry is defined as a land use system that incorporates trees, planting and care techniques, and even animals, to increase yields. Some of the primary technologies of Agroforestry include; ally cropping, live fencing, wood lots, fruit tree propagation and grafting, and increasing availability of food. Ally cropping involves planting beneficial trees within a field crop(corn, beans, rice, peanuts, sorghum, cotton) area which fix nitrogen or provide shade and generally increase soil health and benefit the shorter field crops around the planted trees. Live fencing is the use of thorny, dense, or non-edible plants to surround a field and keep out animals, pests and even people. Live fencing has many great uses in Senegal and I’m trying to focus on increasing usage in my area during service. The Senegalese like to build fences out of dead wood around property they want to protect. The problem with this is the huge population of termites attack fences causing them to need to be rebuilt yearly and it isn’t easy work. Also during the dry season when there are no fresh plants animals will ruin weak old fencing in desperation for whatever plants remain inside. If one were to have a living fence though, termites would leave it alone and it can do cool things like produce flowers which attracts pollinators. The collection of wood for cooking and charcoal production has been hitting the forests of Senegal fairly hard in the past fifty years, so another technology we try to introduce is wood lots, the production of large amounts of wood via planting large amounts of trees in one place. Senegal also has a unique climate for mangoes and during one part of the year is the only place to buy large quantities of fresh mangoes. As a cash crop and food source we assist farmers in the planning and implementation of orchards. The local variety is fairly small and the improved varieties have poor root systems for this environment so what we do is plant a local seed, and then graft an improved variety to the roots of the local. This way the root system is of the local variety and is adapted to the soil, and the top of the tree provides larger and tastier mangoes! Some other work within Agroforestry is to plant trees in a manner that reduces the crazy winds that blow through during rainy season or trees that greatly hinder the movement of the many bush fires during the dry season.

           The first step of my job is to travel around looking at fields and talking to farmers to determine if one or more of these technologies could help them and weather or not they have any desire to put in the work to implement them. Which basically is reduced to biking around the African bush looking at fields and jungles and trying to talk to farmers in Pulaar. Fun times really. Luckily for me the volunteer living in my village prior to me pointed out some good farmers to work with and what they wanted very early in my service. So from here the farmer and I decide on a course of action, what they desire and how we should go about making it happen. I’ve received many requests for live fencing and fruit tree assistance with mangoes, cashews, and citrus.

           

            Now we have to talk about how this is all going to begin. The best method usually is to plant the trees into tree sacks(pictures below) during the dry season, care for them until the rains come, and then outplant them to the fields and let the rain continue to care for them. The benefits of planting all your trees in tree sacks are that it is far easier to care for them as a group. Watering and monitoring for pests and the like is easier when you can stand in one spot than if you had to walk around your field and look at over one hundred different plants every few days, or daily, when it comes to watering. Protecting the young plants from hungry cows and goats is much easier when they are all in one spot as well. So teaching farmers how to use the sacks correctly is another part of my job. They tend to want to put dirt in the sack and call it good, but since the plant will be living off the nutrients in this sack for upwards of a whole year they need to mix in manure or compost to increase the nutrient content. Small things like periodically picking up the sacks and moving them so roots do not break through the bottom and start growing into the ground are also important tips that need to be taught.

            Teaching is a large part of the job. Many farmers are aware of the benefits of techniques such as grafting, but don’t know how to do it. I’ve seen branches from one tree cut off and stuck onto other trees and tied all up with cloth, which might work but seems to only have about an 8% success rate. So if I see improper grafting or a farmer asks me to help them, I teach them to take a six to eight inch segment of the tree you want the fruit from and graft it into the tree and then wrap it with plastic so it doesn’t dry out. Grafting is a quite difficult procedure but I’ve recently had some successes that started producing leaves and am very happy because I had doubted myself a little. There’s a mango tree in my neighbor’s backyard and several of the branches hang behind my hut. So I grafted one of the branches and cut away the others so the graft can grow outward into the new space and give me exclusive good mangoes next year, haha.

Some smaller scale projects take up spots of my time as well. Several weeks ago I went around my village asking if anyone wanted moringa trees. Moringa is a great tree with tons of uses and very difficult to kill and the people here love the leaves to cook with, which are very healthy and in my opinion very delicious. So I planted forty or thereabout two meter beds of moringa and will continue to go around talking to people about how to care for their trees and how to use the leaves for maximum benefits, such as drying them out of the sun. Senegalese like to dry everything in direct sunlight, obviously faster, but tends to reduce the healthy vitamins and proteins.

Monitoring of projects is also a large part of my job. Several of the live fences I am working on involved filling tree sacks and then caring for the trees until the rains arrived. Although laziness, forgetfulness, or other work such as preparing their fields for corn and other crops and general repair of houses and fences and things, tends to make caring for the tree sacks less of a priority for the farmers than it is for me. I’ll visit and see weeds and drooping trees from lack of watering and need to remind them to spend a few minutes with their plants every few days at the least. Making sure projects are coming along and that grafts are alive and that animals aren’t killing everything are all part of the job as well.

One of the best parts about the work is having a work and cultural advisor within the village assigned to each volunteer. Mine is Mama Saillou Balde and he’s excellent. If I need help explaining projects to farmers or if there is a holiday or funeral Mama Saillou is my go to for what’s happening. He is also the sweetest older guy, always checking in to make sure I understand while discussing something and he doesn’t talk really fast to me, just a jolly fellow really.

I also work outside of Agroforestry. The nearest volunteers to me are all health volunteers so I have helped them work on malaria education. We went to the weekly market in my road town(closest town with an actual road and cars) and set up a booth, signs and visual aids about malaria. I also wanted to paint a world map in my village because I’m asked geographical questions frequently but didn’t have anything to help explain, and giving such descriptions purely in a new second language isn’t easy. Now I can show the kids where they are and point out where I’m from and most importantly of all… show people where the countries participating in the world cup are. I’m also involved in another malaria project that studies mosquitoes. I take a sheet and spread it out inside a room/hut and then spray a poison around the room to kill the mosquitoes. Send the mosquitoes to the capital city of Dakar where they study how many and of what type and when and if they’ve eaten, all to advance knowledge of malaria transmission. I do ten huts/rooms per month and it only takes me a few mornings then on to other adventures.

Then there are the activities I have to do that aren’t really work but need to be done to further my work, i.e. trainings, meetings, travel to and from such things. I’m in my regional city today because the past two days were an Agfo summit training. We learned about pineapple propagation and care, banana propagation and care, and some other neat things that I can take back to site and teach farmers. Meetings and trainings might be as far away as 900km and with terrible transportation I spend some time sitting in busses and cars just riding all day. Although the riverboat crossing in Gambia is fairly fun, and they have great chicken sandwiches for 700cfa/$1.50 while you wait!

I also like to care for my own garden. Behind my hut I’ve planted several trees for the production of an edible bean and one for shade eventually. Planted squash, cucumbers, okra, eggplant, peppers (hot and green), some local plants that give good fruits or tubers, and my own fruit trees and live fencing trees to show farmers as an example. I must admit to a great fondness of caring for these plants. Every morning and evening I walk around my backyard and look for sprouts, seeds coming up, or insect damage then try to find and remove the insects. Making sure trees are growing straight and removing unwanted branches, keeping an eye on my compost pile, weeding, seeding, watering, it’s all very Zen and peaceful, one of my favorite things about living here in fact.

Also there are the activities I do that aren’t even work at all. Reading has become a great new friend. A kindle and one of my solar lights make each night before falling asleep entertaining and fulfilling use of my time. The Senegalese also love their tea as I’m sure I’ve mentioned. Sitting around at night with either my counterpart Mama Saillou or my host brother and his family drinking tea and teaching about constellations or chatting about the news which is in French and they understand so I’m usually being taught about what is big in the world in Pulaar. A few nights ago I found some people preparing bread so I went over to watch that procedure. They have a big brick furnace and light a fire inside, let it burn to mostly ash and a little coal, then pull out most of the coal leaving only a small amount of it. Then the bread goes in, upwards of fifty loaves. Each loaf about 16 inches long with a razor blade slice down the middle and painted with a water/sugar/flour mixture just before entering the oven. Cooks for about twenty-five minutes and then you can buy em hot or not for 100cfa/25cents. I sat around asking questions about their procedure then bought two and ate one hot before bed and one for breakfast, was a good night.

This would be an average day for me, I typically like to do two work things per day. Wake up and do maybe run or practice karate before it gets too hot, wash up and find some break-fast(typically leftover dinner of rice or maybe rice porridge). Bike to one of the neighboring villages either 1km or 7km away and check in on a project and discuss outplanting when the rains arrive, look at their work and remind them to weed and water, see if they have any problems and offer solutions. Return home for lunch around 1 or so and then a little rest until 3 or 3:30 when it isn’t so hot. Head back out to monitor my own projects or care for my demonstration live fence behind the school(has to be weeded and pruned) or measure a farmers field to see how many trees he can fit in it or go around talking to people about their new moringa trees and how to care for them or seeing if anyone has problems with any of the above and trying to solve those. Usually make it back home around six thirty or seven. I like to take my bucket shower around dusk or after the stars have come out and then water my plants. Grab my spoon and go sit with my host brother Demba, his wife Safi, their 4 yr old Allu, the six month old Seynee, the village chief/my host dad (although I’ve never called him that, I call him my host), a few random kids that live with us and have family elsewhere, and if they are in village(rarely) one or both of my host moms, Wude and Paite, and wait for dinner to be ready. Hang out sometimes after dinner or go chill with my work partner or simply return to my hut and read until about nine thirty or ten when I fall asleep and start the whole thing over again. Yep, it’s rather nice without TV and such making me feel like I wasted part of my day, part of the reason I came here actually, wanted to sample that freedom.
And now for your dosage of pictures.
Here we've got from right to left Jess Moore, Jenny Cobb, Scott Le, and Allia Crouse. With Rob Leventhal in the background there. Each holding a pommelo during our first Agfo summit on a visit to a huge orchard of citrus, mango, and other neat stuff near Theis.

 This is another shot of the orchard. I believe the approximate size was given as 100 hectars.
 So this is an example of my work on a small scale. You can see some nice cow poo on the left and I've tried to reduce its size by stepping on it, being the pile in the bottom center.
 Mix with sand sitting to the right of the bucket, at a little water from the bucket. Then fill up your tree sack! Only if I'm working with a farmer it is usually several hundred of the smaller sacks seen closer or about fifty of the larger sacks in the back for mangoes and so forth.
 I took this at Jenny Cobb's village wedding (was ceremonial and not legally binding, although she received an engagement ring during the event and will be married in the future to her non volunteer fiance who was visiting at the time). Not sure why the woman pounding thought the serious face was the best option but she used it for each of the eight pictures I took of the women cooking. These wooden morter and pestle sets are everywhere. People pound rice, millet, sorghum, and just about everything in them. Most of the cereal grains are pounded to remove the little husks around the actual grain.
 The starting of the world map in my village outside the entrance to the elementary school, as well as the ever present donkey. 
 Some kids watching us, because they have nothing better to do than watch foreigners and talk about them, usually forgetting that we can somewhat understand them. Here we have from right to left Tasha Torchon, Jess Chow, and Lexi Merrik come to help me with the work and I will go to their villages and help them in the future.  


 The work done(minus the names) we get a nice photo with two kids I like and three kids that bothered us the whole time. Yay kids....(he said with sarcasm)(not that kids are bad but when nobody raises them it's rough.)(Seriously they give the infants to like six year olds to wear on their backs and take care of, not constantly but usually it's the kids taking care of the other kids, not adults) 
Panorama of the finished product with some women returning from planting the rice field caught in the side.
 
 Several of the little monsters from village. I know Bacary in pink, Mamadou the tiny kid in blue, and Bota who is front green. Bota is a strange child always doing odd dances and weird things in general, although comical to say the least. The rest I don't know names of, and they simply wanted to be in something because they saw my camera. The reason of the fist is that they know I know Karate and want to be cool or something, not sure. Although I'm liking this kid in the front right for actually being photogenic.


 Some of the woods/jungle less than a km from my village. The grass will become much taller this is simply the beginning of rainy season and everything short burns during the dry season. 
 One of the paths to and around my village. How's that for scenery on your trip to work every morning? Admittedly for 1/3 of the year it is burnt and all ash, making it look like a post apocalyptic wasteland. They balance one another out overall.  
 And finally some of that reading thing I was talking about. Turns out people used to do this back in the time of radio and monocles. This is Meditations written by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. Tough start and its merely a bunch of numbered suggestions and observations, but many are quite good.
On a final note to everybody noticing that Senegal is next to some of the countries where the ultimate doom of the universe (Ebola)... don't worry about it. It won't get you, and my superiors are making sure that it won't get me. If you combat this argument with 'but the news says', I'd like to remind you that the news covers the same story for months at a time because its full of horseshit and can't actually talk about things deserving of your attention due to how it is designed. My suggestion is to stop watching it entirely and either watch The Daily Show, or just breeze through the headlines online each day.
Next time we'll be covering people of the village! Ok toodles!