(26 May 2008) June Blog- 1 Year On, 1 More To Go

  It’s hard to believe it’s been over a year since leaving my home in Sunny California to come to the exotic hub of West Africa .  As different as it is here, I find strange how normal and non-exotic it feels to me.  Being here has also increased, rather than answered, my questions about development.  It’s also made me contemplate my work here for the second half of my service.

    I really appreciate how much of the stigma of Africa disappeared for me after being here for so long.  Though the way people do things here is drastically different from what I’m used to, the things that people do here aren’t that different.  The pace of life here seems slower but only because it takes so much longer to do any one thing, there isn’t time or energy to do more beyond that.  The climate is another huge factor.  Sometimes we joke that entropy occurs at a faster rate here than anywhere else; because the temperature is so much higher I think that’s technically a fact.  This weather ages everything at a warp-speed pace.  As I write this it’s 2:45pm in the shade inside my hut and with both the window and door open it’s 101.5F.  The other day it was 109F inside my room at 5pm; that was hot.

    I may lament it at times, but I’ve become accustomed to pulling water at the well every other day and carrying it back to my room on my head.  In the states I can’t imagine how much water I use in a day; here, I use less than 15liters a day for bathing, drinking, cleaning, etc (granted this does not include laundry, which takes 30-40liters of water once every two weeks or so).  I’m also much more aware of the moon.  With no electricity to create light pollution it gets dark when the sun goes down and the amount of light is entirely dependant on the moon.  As for weather, I notice everything.  In the states if it’s too hot you turn on the a/c or a fan; if it’s too cold, you turn up the heat.  So much time is spent in a climate-controlled environment.  Here if it’s cold (anything below 80F is cold) I put on more clothes and sleep inside.  If it’s hot I sweat and sleep outside; if it’s really hot I am soaked in sweat and sleep outside.  I’m used to my younger brothers and sisters running around like wild monkeys every evening.  The more moonlight, the madder they get.  I’m used to their ripped and tattered clothes and my host mom walking around with no shirt on.  I get excited about millet with leaf sauce for dinner and am not surprised on nights where there is no dinner.  When I go someplace I walk or bike.  If my destination is really far I take a hot, smelly, overcrowded, and often-breaking-down relic of a bus that we call an alhum. Needless to say it’s not air-conditioned.  I’m used to the 100km (60mi) trip taking at least four hours and arriving in Tamba covered in dust that has adhered to my sweat.  I’m used to the trip from my village to Tamba (130km) taking a day.

    There used to be times I’d be in disbelief that anyone could live like this, but at the end of a year of living it, it just seems normal.  Part of the reason I wanted to come to Africa is all the bad press we hear about it in the states.  I knew I needed to dispel the myths that had built up in my mind and replace them with a picture based on my experiences here.  This much I am achieving.

    I think every Peace Corps Volunteer thinks that they will change the world on some level, ideally for the better.  In some ways you have to believe it to take the plunge and go.  I came into this with basically no development experience, but the idea that Africa is a big part of the world that seems to have a lot of problems that no one understands. All sorts of people spout off all sorts of solutions: leave it alone, give money, flood the place with international NGOs, or adopt a child… In my opinion Africa has been taken advantage of for centuries and continues to be, and as someone who profits from this I feel obligated to try and see the bigger picture I don’t really have any money to send that would make much of a difference, and even if I did I am unsure of how wisely it would be spent. International aid organizations in Africa constitute a major sector of employment, and while unemployment is a huge issue here it seems strange to me that working for an NGO is one of the best jobs someone here can get. Needless to say I am in no position to adopt a child.

    One of the nice parts of Peace Corps is all the books we pass around. Paul Farmer is a household name here. Martin Meredith provides an excellent, if lengthy, account of African history leading up to and through revolution until present day in The Fate of Africa. In the states I probably couldn’t sit through book after book on development, but here I’ve got the time and my interest is yet to wane. However, instead of deducing the solution or means to achieve sustainable development, this seemingly holy grail, I’ve only deduced that a lot of factors led to this web of issues that seems to have kept Africa back. Untangling this to move forward is going to be slow.

    I often find myself thinking of projects for my village and area that they haven’t mentioned yet. The consciousness of PC Senegal is currently shifting in a positive direction, but during my training we were totally discouraged from any projects that weren’t entirely initiated by our communities. The trouble is there are a multitude of basic needs that aren’t met here. Only a few compounds have latrines; most people walk out into the forests/fields to relieve themselves. Every drop of water used has to be pulled 64 meters or more up from the ground and carried home on the women’s heads. This water contains dust, dirt, and sometimes parasites. It’s a rarity here when a woman gives birth to twins and both survive. Women in the village often have 8-12 pregnancies during their lifetime; around 40% of those children don’t make it past the age of five. Though my family is fortunate enough not to have this problem, there are families here that eat one meal a day. The World Food Program provides a modest but filling breakfast and lunch to the school children each school day, except when it runs out. That’s for the kids who get to go to school. Some children are kept home to help with work around the house (the case with many girls) or for lack of money to continue their studies. Many simply fail to pass the exams required to continue on to the next level and drop out. I can’t even begin to picture my opportunities as a third grade dropout. When so many students are incapable of passing their exams, it shows how ineffective the education system is.

    I have trouble demanding the solution to their salvation from people who are starved in so many ways. Outside of the towns almost all the adults are illiterate, and very few children what I consider fully literate. The farthest people in my village have gone is usually Kouthia Ba (for the women) or Koumpentoum (for the men). Few have ever been to the regional capital Tambacounda. They have little to no knowledge of anything going on outside of Senegal and even less of factors outside their control that impact their lives (such as grain or cotton subsidies in other countries that may decrease the value or demand of the crops they grow here, or a global food shortage that has caused the cost of a sack of rice to increase 50% but done nothing to increase their income, or the poor quality of their roads that impedes potential trade and work opportunities). How is it, I would like to know, that these people should be able to have a clearly mapped out answer to their problems? Even when they do know what will improve their lives they must defend it to people or organizations that doubt the proposed solutions or drag out their execution. The contrast to this is when random groups, usually NGOs, stop off and hand off wells, or machines, or big-ticket things. This serves to reinforce the “give-me, give-me” attitude that drives me crazy. These people do have to work for things but how much do they need to convince us that their basic needs should be met? How much is reasonable for them to put forward to meet these needs? As I skimmed through volume one of the Oxfam Guide to Development, I could only imagine my village’s response to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Part of the trouble of having so many questions and so few answers, is the paralyzing effect it has on action. Part of me feels that I shouldn’t take any action without knowing its full impact, after all that is what has caused a lot of these problems. At the same time we will never have all the information and have to start somewhere. Doing nothing changes nothing.

    This leads me to figuring out what I will do in this next year, the second half of my service. As I mentioned earlier, the atmosphere of PC Senegal was pretty negative when my batch arrived. Since then, a new Country Director has come in with a much more positive can-do attitude and a lot of jaded volunteers have left. I spent part of this first year unlearning a general destined-to-fail outlook on projects, and really do feel I can help my village to improve at least some parts of their lives. My women’s group, though discordant at times, is slowly taking steps forward to achieve their goals. Right now we have leads with an NGO, some random guy from the US Embassy, and possibly Engineers Without Borders to work on our well-pump project. Once I return from the States I’m also going to begin a numeration class with the women to teach them how to write and say the French numbers. I am thinking about starting a men’s group to get them off their asses and doing something, but their work season is about to begin and by the time it finishes I will be getting ready to leave. I am also thinking about starting a latrine project (seeing as it’s a basic need and the improved sanitation would lead to a break in the oral fecal cycle, and a decrease in incidences of diarrhea), but my village hasn’t mentioned this as an issue. I’m hesitant to start it without going through the possibly lengthy process of getting them to understand that if they stopped going in the forest and exclusively used latrines it would keep them from having diarrhea and decrease child mortality. I’m nervous that if I do go through the process with them that by the time they get it I won’t have enough time to see the project through, leaving a huge and costly project for whoever comes after me. Other things I want to do include a girls group and boys group. I’m not yet sure what my target age range will be, or my max number of participants (too many and nothing gets done, too few and you’re exclusive), but I’m hoping to start when I return.

    I am also not sure how much to leave for the next volunteer after me. For all I know the next PC slated to come to Lewe could early terminate during training, or right after they get to site, leaving no one to continue any projects I might leave. Also, some PCVs prefer coming to a site with activities already set up for them to do, while others would prefer to make it entirely their own. This won’t stop me from starting girls and boys groups but it is a serious concern for bigger projects like wells or latrines. As long as two years is, it’s not that long when everything has to move so slow except time doesn’t slow down for us to catch up.

    A year in, I would have to say that Peace Corps is all about balance. Balance between your comfort zone and uncomfortable places, cultures, locus of control, project ideas, personal time and work time, and more. I was learning how to balance while I worked in the states before I came here, and this process has continued. Being here has tipped my scales in a totally different direction (both literally and figuratively) but I think overall it will help me to find a greater balance in my life. Inshallah!

(14 February 2008) Happy New Year From Senegal

Happy 2008 everyone! Time has been moving right along. In December, six other volunteers and I headed off to Vienna for an unbelievable Christmas and New Years.  A previous PCV here in Tamba invited all of us to celebrate the holidays with her family in Austria, where her father forks for the UN.  The only way I can think to describe it is AMAZING.  Her parents know the area well and showed us all around (including day trips to the Alps and Salzburg).  After New Years a friend and I went to Krakow and toured Auchwitz-Birkenau, a sobering experience.  Due to the availability of electricity and internet in Europe and here, most of the pictures are already on-line.

On our way back to site we stopped in Tamba to participate in a Tostan demonstration.  Tostan is an NGO, started by an rPCV, that teaches local language literacy classes for adults in Senegalese villages.   The group has also included a component about the harms of FGC (Female Genital Cutting) and most of the villages that go through the several year program have a ceremony at the end to renounce this practice.  I should say that I’ve heard mixed responses from villages as to how many of the villages actually discontinue this process, but regardless it is an amazing educational program.  On Sun Jan 13, over 900 villages from the Tamba region came to celebrate their completion of the program and announce their discontinuation of FGC.  Around 10 of us PCVs joined the parade to the stadium and then watched the ceremony.

Before leaving Tamba I made a stop at GADEC, an NGO that house CONGAD (the group that networks/organizes all the NGO’s in Senegal) in Tamba.  I’ve heard other volunteers have worked successfully with GADEC and my hope is for them to help my village get the grain-pounding machine, well pump and a fence for our future garden.  

After returning to the village I met with the women’s group and we wrote a demand for those things, which I have since delivered to GADEC.  Another one of the group’s objectives has been to get a health hut and train a midwife.  I spoke with my counterpart, the nurse at the dispensaire in Kouthia Ba, and reported my findings at the next women’s group meeting.  The women responded with MUCH emphasis that getting a pounding machine and well pump were the absolute first priorities.  I explained that the demand to GADEC was addressing these goals, but that didn’t prevent us from also talking to the Ministry of Health to work on the other identified needs.  Not only are the priorities NOT mutually exclusive, but it also makes the most sense to work on them concurrently because who knows how long it will be before any of the projects are completed.

This then led into a really great cross-cultural talking point about how we prioritize and pursue goals in the USA (at least how we ‘ideally’ pursue them) and thinking in terms of short and long term goals.  I ended up drawing a lot of lines in the sand, labeling them now, 1yr, 2yrs, 3yrs, and so on, and then jumping back and forth between them.  Using their ‘ultimate goal’ of selling vegetables at a variety of markets around Tamba, I tried to show that it takes time to get to that point.  That may be their 5yr goal, but in order to be able to reach that we hope in the next year or so to get a pump for the well.  I also tried to get them to think about what they want for the village when the young children are my age. This type of thinking doesn’t exist much in the village, so I’m not expecting any huge ideas just yet, but you gotta start somewhere. 

In other exciting news, my sister Penda had her baby. On Jan 24 she gave birth to her first child, a baby girl, in just under 4 hours. I have to say I’ve sort of been on cloud 9 ever since my uncle decided to name the baby Sharon after me. The only person who can pronounce it properly is my uncle; the ‘sh-‘sound doesn’t exist in rural Wolof.  The baptism was this the Friday after and I’ve taken a bunch of photos and a few short videos (if you know how to get these to upload, let me know), so check out the picasa site.

Despite the hubbub in the village, we found time to finally build my cement bed and path in my backyard.  It’s strange that a cement bed is luxurious here, but it really is. The path will come in handy when the rains start because part of my backyard floods.

Before I forget, Bowie had her kittens!  I came home to find 3 pudgy, fuzzy bundles around a week or 2 old (2 girls, 1 boy). I’ve given 1 away so far and think I have homes for the other 2.  The kittens are super cute, but 4 cats is a lot to take care of here.  In the meantime, the kittens continue to chase each other around my room.  My goal is to get Bowie fixed as soon as I get back from WAIST (West African International Softball Tournament), where I am now.

Wish Team Tamba luck!

Sharon

(30 Oct 2007) The Invasion Of Earwigs, Barbarita Gets A Boyfriend & The Radio Show

Happy Halloween! As always it is hard to believe I have been here as long as I have, but 7 months down and 19 more to go.  Things as usual are up and down but overall well.  I am glad to report that we have not had any more ETs (Early Termination) from our March 07 stage, so we just might break the trend of losing someone each month.

 

Climate-wise the rainy season is basically over.  The ‘cold season’ is supposed to follow the rains but when I put my thermometer out in the sun the other day it said 133 degrees F.  Granted it was in direct sunlight in the afternoon, but when my neighbor put her thermometer outside a little before 10am it said 120 degrees F.

 

While it is supposed to cool down soon, this interim hot period has brought along some things.  Recently my hut became infested with earwigs.  They must have been laying dormant in the wood supports for who knows how long, but the heat brought them out.  Though they have since tapered off dramatically I was squishing hundreds every night for a few weeks.  Logically, this means that their numbers were in the thousands to begin with.  Nowadays I find and squish around 50 or so each night before I go to bed.  They also developed a nasty habit of crawling into the top of my water filter and dying there (thankfully they didn’t make it into the bottom half where the water filters into), but I think they’ll stop hanging out there now that there aren’t as many of them.

 

Along with the earwigs another species has decided to make my hut home.  The frog community of Keur Ndongo love all the little nooks and crannies under my bed, behind my trunks, and by my tables.  I wouldn’t mind so much except that they pooh all over my floor & I’m sick of stepping on frog dumps every morning and having to sweep them up several times a day.  Just as my mom in the states said, they do eat the earwigs, but not fast enough or enough of them for me to welcome them in.  As it is I usually sweep them out a few times a week.  A few days ago I had to have swept out at least 30 frogs.  I thought that many of you might think this estimate an exaggeration so I took a few pictures.  I don’t know when they’ll make it online but I assure you that there exists proof of the plague of frogs in my room.

 

Snakes.  When I came to Senegal everyone said all the snakes were in Kedougou.  They were wrong.  Alhumdilili they have not gotten in my hut and there don’t seem to be very many, but I’ve now seen 2 live snakes in/near my village.  The first was in my backyard; I walked outside and saw it slithering out through my fence and into the fields.  The second was as I was riding back to my village from another nearby.  Both times the snake was moving away from me and the trail into the bush.  I didn’t get a good look at either but they were both a tan/brown, thin and no more than 2 or 3 feet long.  My uncle said he saw a snake in his compound a few weeks ago that was more than 2 meters long.  Hopefully neither Bowie nor I will meet that one.

 

On a happier animal note my all-black hen, Barbarita, now has a boyfriend.  After eating some of her delicious eggs my family convinced me to buy a rooster and wait for chicks.  So my brother found an all-white rooster and I named it Gringo.  Barbarita & Gringo seem very happy eating bits of corn and small bugs together. I’ll try to post some pics of them soon.

 

Since the Health Program of PC Senegal doesn’t really have any clearly defined objectives or methods to achieve its goal of helping the Senegalese improve their health, I’ve decided to let me family teach me how to cook.  My sister Pendal is always telling me to come into her kitchen hut and watch so I’ve started doing so and trying to pay attention in the process.  I’ve also started doing a little cooking myself.  There is a woman in my village who planted tomatoes (yes, she’s one of the ones who approached me wanting to start a garden) and she’s been selling them each week at the lumo in Koutia Ba.  I’ve started buying tomatoes from her here in the village (Alhumdilili for fresh vegetables!) and have been making a sauce out of them, onions, garlic, and some spices sent from home.  I’ve also been buying fresh baked bread for my family to dip in it (Alhumdilili for having a bread maker in the village).  It’s not much, but it’s the closest I can get to pizza in the village.  There’s no cheese out this way (and no way to make it keep), but the tomato sauce with bread is pretty good and my family really likes it.

 

Another thing that has caught on quickly is crocheting.  I’d been teaching some random people in my village (adults, kids, girls, boys) how to knit.  Another volunteer found out and gave me a box of yarn and some crochet hooks that had been sent to her.  Though I knit I don’t know how to crochet, so I thought I’d teach myself.  When I brought out some yarn, a hook and my how-to book my mom saw it and said she knew how to use it.  I swear within 30 minutes of just handing her the stuff she had sleeves and the top part of a shirt for a small child done.  I was so impressed I gave her more yarn and she has since made 3 cute kids tops.  Additionally, she has taught at least my 10 year old brother and 13 year old sister to crochet.  My brother has already made a beanie-type cap and my sister made a small change purse.  My mom said she learned from an older sister and is willing to teach other women in the village.  I want to have her teach the women’s group, but I want everyone to be able to start with a hook and some yarn (right now there are 5 or 6 hooks but 30 or so women in the group).  They have a cheap kind of yarn available here (a small ball is around 200 cfa) at the lumo, but I’m yet to see any crochet hooks or knitting needles around.  If anyone has any yarn, kitting needles or crochet hooks lying around feel free to send them my way…

 

I’m not sure what the knitting and crocheting will lead to here yet.  If it was really cold they could make themselves blankets, scarves and sweaters, but I’m not sure how practical that is in Sub-Saharan Africa.  They really like to wear beanies (I don’t understand why when it’s so hot, but all them men wear them) so they might be able to sell those locally.  Otherwise, I’m keeping my eyes open for any potential markets with tourists, volunteers or anyone else.  Regardless I think they enjoy learning and using a new skill.

 

In other village news, my uncle is starting a garden.  He’s paying my two older brothers to work on it and right now they’re building the fence.  I don’t know what all he’ll plant, but I’m hoping it will help inspire other people in the village to do their own.  My brother Viex says that once they’re done with the fence there he wants to build a fence around the watermelon we planted near our compound.  So far the tall fields of corn and millet surrounding it have acted as a natural barrier, but now that everything is being harvested they’ll need to put an actual fence up.  My brother is yet to talk to his dad about going to work at the garden in Kounghel.  When I asked him why he said he was afraid his dad will want him to stay and work in the village, but maybe if I talk up what a great opportunity it is to the chief Viex will have a better chance.

 

Koutia Ba (7km from me) is just opening a college (the equivalent of our junior high).  I met the assistant director on my way back from Koupentoum the other day.  He speaks pretty good English and seems like a good fellow to work with so we exchanged numbers.  I found out from one of the boys in my village who will attend the college (he’s 19 years old by the way) that they teach French, English, Spanish and Arabic.  It’s interesting that in the states we take French or Spanish while here in the middle of West Africa with no power and barely running water (Koutia Ba has a faucet) students are taught 4 languages beyond their native tongue.  I’m not sure what I’ll do with the college yet, but I imagine at the very least I can help with the English class.

 

Travel wise I just got back from another waterfall excursion in Kedougou.  Another PCV had their birthday so we biked out to see a couple falls.  We didn’t end up seeing anything the first day because we kept getting lost, but we did bike through a forest fire, cross a rickety stick bridge and my friend became severely dehydrated.  The next day we fared better and biked to the ‘trail head’.  After that we bushwhacked, hiked, climbed up/over/through rocks and waded our way to some beautiful falls in Guinea .  There wasn’t any official border crossing, but if you look on a map the falls we were at are located in Guinea .  The pics aren’t yet up on the Picasa site, but hopefully you can see the falls, the rocks, the stick bridge and a dead monkey from the trip soon.

 

Last but not least Erin, Sara and I did a radio show in Koupentoum the other night.  We were invited on by a local teacher to introduce ourselves, talk about our villages and Peace Corps.  The show was only a half hour long but we did the entire show in Wolof (Pulaar for Erin ) and did pretty darn well.  I’m going to try to attach the mp3 file to this email so hopefully you’ll be able to hear it.  The next day on our way to Tamba at least 3 people came up to us said they’d heard us on the radio and really liked the show.  Soon we hope to have a regular spot every couple of weeks and I’ll be sure to keep you posted. 

 

That’s all for now.  Don’t forget to update your records with the contact info in the email right before this one.

 

Cheers!

Kodou

(5 Sept 2007) September Already

It’s hard to believe it’s already September and ten days from now will mark six whole months in country for our group. We will also have lost six people from our group alone; hopefully we don’t continue the one-a-month average we seem to have going for ourselves.  People have left for a variety of reasons ranging from family issues at home to lack of direction with the PC Senegal program, but a new CD (Country Director) is on the way in and will hopefully make changes to help decrease the number of people frustrated with a variety of things in PC’s set-up and program.

 

A lot has happened in the last few months, but I’ll try to keep it concise. Before IST, my village managed to assemble for the first women’s group meeting.  Scheduled to start around 2pm , a group of ten men showed up at 3:30pm .  I expressed my sincerest appreciation for their interest, but informed them that a women’s group usually had women (not men) as members.  Erin appeared in my village on her bike around this time and within an hour a group of around thirty women had gathered at my granduncle’s house (the meeting location).  Though I imagine much of their attendance was due to Erin’s unexpected arrival, we were able to have a successful meeting and the women decided that now just isn’t the best time to start a big group garden.  Instead, they decided to continue to meet in my absence and start thinking of ideas.

 

When I returned back from IST last week I was elated to discover that not only had they been meeting every Saturday, but they had also begun to “cotiser” (French for “pooling money”) money at each meeting and were keeping a written record.  Additionally, they had elected a President, Vice-President, Secretary, and Treasurer.  Though the group is for women, my grand-uncle has been assisting by providing the best meeting space and helping to keep the record of money they are collecting.  His goal is to have all the women contribute 50cfa (20 US cents) for now, which most of the women have done.  At our meeting this past Saturday they expressed that they would like me to teach them to make “neem lotion” (homemade mosquito repellent made from oil, soap, water, and Neem tree leaves). The part that has me the most jazzed is their plan of using the money they’ve collected to purchase just enough supplies for me to show them first; then if they like it and think they will use it or can sell it they will use the collected money to buy supplies to make more.  I can’t express how proud I am that it was their idea for me to show them first, see how it goes, and then decide from there.  They’re also interested in learning other potential money-making projects, but there’s plenty of time for that. 

 

IST itself was exhausting, but enjoyable.  I scored high enough on the Wolof exam that I was able to take Pulaar du Nord for the language portion, although I found myself reverting to Wolof in class more than Pulaar (I think that’s a good sign for my Wolof at least).  Our tech sessions also ended up being more helpful than we were expecting, granted our expectations were pretty low. Guinea, which was evacuated in late February of this year and only just recently brought back a few volunteers, sent their Health APCD to assist with and basically run our entire tech training. Though we were nervous at first, the APCD did a phenomenal job and was flexible to our feedback/needs (something that did not happen at PST).  I was too busy/exhausted to spend much time with my Thies host family, but it was good to see them.  Overall it was really great to get to reunite with our stage and see how everyone has adjusted and grown.  The ice cream at Les Delice (a Thies restaurant we often frequented after class) wasn’t bad either.

 

Timing-wise, the week after IST ends the next stage on their way our has their COS (Close of Service) conference in Dakar, so by the end of IST a good portion of PCV’s in Senegal were in the Thies/Dakar region.  Also, it seems to be sort of a tradition for the stage a year ahead (who came in March 06) to throw the IST group a little party.  So after classes finished on Saturday a good number of us headed to Mbour (a beach town along the coast) for a Roaring 20’s-themed get together.  Hopefully the pictures are finished uploading by the time you get this.  The next afternoon a girl from Kedougou and I trekked our way back to the Tamba regional house (a hellish journey of 19 hours).  Normally it shouldn’t take that long to get back, but our itinerary wasn’t well thought out and we’ve learned a lesson for next time. 

 

Getting back to the village was surprisingly exciting.  Another big happy moment was me actually feeling excited to see my family when I ran into some of them on the side of the road at a stop before Koupentoum.  During IST I was a little nervous that I might not be that excited to get back to site, but it’s good to be back.  My new camera (which arrived in the mail while I was in Thies) somehow broke, so I don’t have any new pictures of the village, but it looks like a completely different place.  In fact I probably would have biked past it had I not seen a small child who called out to me.  I had to ask this poor kid if this was Keur Ndongo and to take me to my compound because the fields have grown so tall I couldn’t find my way.  As my village is set-up with compounds scattered around a bit the farmers use ALL of the space within and around the village to plant.  The result is rich green millet stalks that are taller than I am everywhere. The roads in and around the village are pretty awful and mushy (if not flooded), but thankfully the rain has cooled the temperatures a bit. 

 

In other news I think my sister Kodou (the one I’m named after) might be getting married.  Though before I left she expressed that she did not want to get married anytime soon and wanted to continue to go to school, now four weeks later she seems ecstatic at the idea of a husband.  I’m not exactly sure how the process of arranging a marriage here works, but there were men from a village between Koupentoum and Tamba coming by the compound every day after I got back to site.  I keep getting mixed answers about my sister’s age, but she’s somewhere between 12-15 years old, a normal age around here to get hitched.  I’ll try to keep you posted as things progress.

 

David Bowie is also alive and well.  I swear she doubled in size again by the time I got back from IST, but her fur has grown back and she looks like a happy healthy kitty.  She’s here with me now in Tamba to get vaccinated and spade, but it looks like the risk of infection is much higher with how humid it is now, so she won’t be spade until November or so.  And yes, I am using Bowie as an example for family planning.  I’m not advocating that people get sterilized, but that it’s important to think ahead before getting pregnant about what you can afford/handle and that there are a variety of options to plan out one’s family.  Also, talking about Bowie makes it a little easier to breach the subject of family planning.

 

Well, I think that’s about it for now.  Now that our secondary IST (for the health PCV’s organized by region) is over, I’m planning to head back to site tomorrow.  Sara’s birthday is on Sept 25 and we have a house meeting on Sept 23, so I’ll be back in town around then.  Fortunately (for my budget) or unfortunately (for my sanity) the cell phone reception in my area has basically disappeared.  The antennae by us broke down before we left (part of the reason Erin arrived unexpectedly during the women’s group meeting) and though it’s been fixed the reception is the worst it’s been since I’ve been at site. So, whether you’ve tried to reach me by phone or not, it looks like most of my future phone conversations will have to be in Koupentoum or Tamba.  I’ve also heard about some people who’ve bought calling cards but can’t get through on my cell phone; the Tamba house has a phone that we can receive phone calls on and the calling cards seem to work here.  So if you’ve bought one and would like to use it, e-mail me or my mom for the number and try me around Sept 20.

 

Exhausted, but enthused

 

Kodou

 

PS- Yes Ramadan starts on Sept 13, but I have a decent stock of protein bars/jerky/instant meals in the village.  Wish me luck!