We be burnin'

The hot season is starting to move in. As I write this at 8 in the morning it is 84 degrees out there. Weirdly enough it probably got down to 80 last night and I was so cold I needed a blanket. Yeah boy!

Village life is starting to pick up finally! I have weekly women's group meetings with six different groups alongside members of the aid group AfriCare. We are going to construct either 2 very large gardens or six smaller gardens for the women to use. The produce (hopefully) grown will be used both to sell as well as (even more hopefully) eat. When there is money the people in my village subsist on a steady diet of greasy rice and dried fish only. When there's no money we eat this weird porridge stuff with fish bones in it...I prefer the greasy rice. I can officially say that such a diet leaves something to be desired in the energy and nutrition department. So fingers crossed we can start construction soon!

I also held a meeting for all the women in my town recently with the school director and teachers. To be honest that made me realize how little of this language I really speak. When you have 50 women trying to talk over one another in a small echoey room...let's just say I was extremely grateful that one of my friends was there to translate for me. Actually he had to translate from Seereer into Wolof for the school director who then translated into French for me. The outcome of the meeting was we organized 4 classes that I'll be starting up next Wednesday. I'm going to be teaching the women French, literacy, and basic mathematics like addition and subtraction. I'm also going to be holding an English class for the men in my village who have expressed interest. We'll see if these classes are a success. The rains are supposed to be here really early this year, so I may only get one or two weeks worth of classes before since once the rains come all my work will stop because everyone goes to the fields all day long. I'm actually really excited to go and help my family in the fields.

To take this in another direction, I have been told that I need to post more pictures, but unfortunately my camera has been broken for the past few months and I haven't been able to take any. Thankfully one of my friends visited my village and they were kind enough to take some pictures.

This is a picture of my counterpart/brother's two wives. The one on the left is Roqee, the second wife. Her son Modou is in the bucket, and the first wife Dib is on the right. I love these women so much.

This is me with Mara, he's about 3 years old and I really, REALLY wish I could bring him back to America with me. He's the sweetest baby in the world.

Ok, it was an especially hot day and we had a charete in our compound with a barrel of water in it. Apparently the barrel was leaking and these two boys are drinking the drops coming through the bottom. It was hilarious.

Baby Modou in his bucket. Adorable.

Baby Ami with her mother, Dib. Because you can never have too many pictures of babies. Fun fact, Ami can say three words: 'ya' which means mom, 'ba' which means dad, and 'Yacine' which is my name :) She always shouts it out whenever she sees me, and then usually starts a little dance.

My host mom Kumba with her 'power stick'. She uses it to hit anything annoying her. Horses, goats...children. Please keep in mind these are not hard hits, more like taps (at least with the children. Animals not so much)

Little family protrait. Dib's oldest son Goor (10), Ya Kumba, me, and Mbai (4-ish)

Another picture of me and Mara. I'm teaching him English and he can count to five. I don't know if he really understands that they are numbers or just that when he gets to three I toss him up into the air and that's just plain fun.

I went to visit the other Seereer sites in March (I'm the only Seereer placed outside of the Kaolack/Faticke region) and we had blueberry muffins for breakfast one day! De-li-cious

Chickens are evil raptors

Up until now my days in village have been fairly quiet since I've mostly concentrated on learning the Seereer language and integrating successfully into my village. This being the case I have had a sufficient amount of time on my hands to sit and think about the deep things in life like: what is the meaning of life? Where will the future lead me? and what the freak is that chicken doing!?! But don't be worried, it isn't only chickens. I also daily catch myself gazing awestruck at goats, sheep, cows and horses. Just the other day I was visiting another volunteers village when we both realized that we had been sitting and commenting on goats for 15 minutes. Yes, the life I lead is exceptionally exciting.

Since I've done so much 'research' on these beasts of Senegalese households, and since I've always been a huge animal person, I decided I'd compile a list of interesting facts that I've learned. So here we go:

1) Chickens are not herbivores. I learned this while I watched a 'pack' of them hunting down and eating frogs.
2) Chickens are cannibals. This was discovered when I watched them viciously fighting over the entrails of      one of their previous friends.
3) Roosters do not crow only in the morning. They crow ALL DAY LONG! Their favorite spot? Right next    to me while I'm trying to read or sleep.

(Can you tell I hate chickens yet)

4) A braying donkey sounds like a car crash.
5) Like roosters, donkeys like to bray all day long. They also very much enjoy braying randomly throughout    the night.
6) Baby goats are the cutest things in the world...except for my niece. Nothing is cuter than her.

Baby goat = adorable

My niece = beyond the ability of words to describe

7) The sheep here are the ugliest things in the world.
8) Apparently the inside of my hut is the perfect place for horses to hang out. (I need to get a picture of this     one)

9) According to Islam, cats hold the keys to heaven, and dogs hold the keys to hell. I tend to agree with the cat part since getting my two cats has means that I no longer have mice. However, I think the dog portion    should be changed to chickens. 

This is what heaven looks like. (This is one of my cats, Abdul Fall Cheese Ninja lounging about.)

And this is what hell dogs really look like

I think that's enough for now. I'll check back in soon with an actually informative update on my life :)

Happy belated Christmas and New Years! (And let's not forget super bowl!!)

Once again, it’s been quite a long time since my last update. I’ll just give a brief synopsis of what’s been going on the last month and a half.

The last half of December and all of January were filled with much comings and goings in my little sphere of Senegal. I celebrated Christmas with my fellow volunteers in Tambacounda. We prepared slightly traditional food like cookies, mashed potatos, and roasted chicken. Sadly I went without my favorite winter holiday food: potatiskurv (or however you’re supposed to spell that). We also partook in traditional holiday activities like board games (Settlers of Cataan was more like an unimpeded addiction), dance parties and caroling. In case you were wondering, nothing seems to terrify the Senegalese more than a group of volunteers singing carols. They didn’t really like the Christmas songs, but they loooved ‘Jeremiah was a Bullfrog’.

New Years Eve was uneventful back in my village where I ended up passing out at 9 pm. Actually, this isn’t too different from my normal NYE habits back home…I’m so cool J

In the middle of January we had an All Volunteer conference back at the center in Thies. Basically we all got together and listened to others give presentations on the projects they had been working on for the past year or so. Honestly I can’t say I got a whole lot out of it, but it was really nice to see all 200 volunteers in one place.

After AllVoll we had the West Africa Softball Tournament in Dakar. My region (Tamba) had its own team, but to be honest I went to maybe 30 minutes of one game and spent the rest of my time eating a whole lot of fantastic food. Tracey, Kate and I were lucky enough to stay with one of the directors of USAID in the Almadies section of Dakar. It was incredible. There was an oven. It was clean. We had beds. We had a choice of either HOT or COLD water. And the garden was incredible! There was grass! I’ve still not gotten over my shock at how nice that house was. I was literally in shock and unable to formulate cohesive sentences for the first few hours I was there.

After this I went back to site for about two weeks and now I’m back in Thies for my IST (in-service training). Allegedly we’re going to learn the agricultural, and agro-forestry techniques that will enable us to work for the next two years. We’ll see if this actually happens.

This is the tree stump that I can sometimes get cell reception from.

Nduutaan and her son Dawda. Dawda, like almost all Senegalese children, absolutely refuses to wear pants. I caught him on a rare occasion where he was willing to put a shirt on.

I found this in the Dakar fukijay. Oh America, how you've spread.

I feel like this is a perfect sob story "Save Africa" picture.
 

These are some of the children in my compound. Goor, the one on the far left, is being 'tough' for the photo.

Still kickin' it

Ok it’s been quite a while since my last post so I’ve decided to give an update using traditional test wisdom. So here goes, my last month (or two) in one hundred words or less:

I swore in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer on November 4^th, gave a speech in Seereer in front of the US Ambassador and other Senegalese dignitaries (I can die fulfilled now, I’m on YouTube), participated in my first Tabaski (Alhamdulillah I missed the sacrificing of the four sheep that became lunch), installed in my village, learned that you really can go crazy without any outside contact, became an aunt, celebrated a lovely thanksgiving, adopted (more like stole from their mother) two baby kittens, committed cricket genocide (sorry if that’s offensive, but it’s true) and developed microscopic amounts of patience. 

FYI, that paragraph is in fact EXACTLY 100 words, booyaah kashaah!

And finally here are a couple pictures depicting some of what I just described. 

This pretty much sums up Tabaski. FYI, she's cutting the head off the sheep.

Actually this summarizes it. Just walking around with a sheep's head, you know, no big.

Jaxat, Asaan, and I at Tabaski. Jaxat is beyond adorable, and do you see how much fabric is on my head!?!

My hut!

This little mouse got stuck in the bottle one night and kept me awake for ever. I was extremely brave and set him free outside all by myself.

This is the view from my backyard at site. Beautiful!

I found ‘Waldo’ in Ngoundian…

For the past month we have been herded around Senegal like a bunch of sheep. Every few days we go to a different site. From Thies, to CBT (our language villages), back to Thies, to volunteer visits, back to Thies, etc etc…it’s quite the merry-go-round we got going on. Except there are no clowns, so I guess that’s a good thing.

So quick update. While in Senegal my main language will be Seereer, so that’s what I’ve been studying for the past month. My CBT village is Ngoundian and although extremely hot, it’s a lovely town. I live with the Ngom family here and my name is Fatou Ngom. I have one father, 2 mothers, and at least 15 siblings (although I keep meeting new ones coming back from vacation every day so who really knows). In three weeks, after swearing in (that’s assuming I’ve passed all tests satisfactorily), I’ll be going to my permanent village: Darou Salaam, Tambacounda. FYI, not only am I the first volunteer in my village, I’m the first Seereer volunteer to be placed outside of the Kaolack/Fatick region. That’s a little bit of a shock let me tell you. It’s really quite funny though. Whenever I tell people that I’m going to Tambacounda they all say two things: 1) I didn’t even know there were Seereers in Tamba? And 2) Wow Tamba, it’s reaaaalllllyyy hot there! Yay for me!

My family henna'd my hand. 'F' for Fatou (even though it looks like the hebrew 'hei' which means life)

A great many things have happened in the past month as well. I’ve been to soccer matches (my team has won both times of course), been pooped on by a bat, learned how to wash clothes with my hands better than any washing machine, swam in the mangroves, eaten unrecognizable parts of a mystery animal, gained control of my face when people tell me I should get a Senegalese husband, and perfected the art of falling asleep while fanning myself. I’m getting pretty well-rounded here if I do say so myself.

Oh, as to how I found ‘waldo’ seeing as he’s such an elusive fellow. In Senegal greetings are beyond important (you get chewed out in public by the people you forget to greet) and so it makes sense that there are a billion different greetings that take place at different times during the day. In the morning you say ‘Waldo’. So yep, mystery solved. He’s been in Senegal the whole time.

I’ve missed two very important weddings in the past few weeks. First, my older brother, congratulations!! And second, Leslie. Again congratulations!! You guys have no idea how much I wish I could have been there.

This is my baby sister Jaxat. She's adorable!

Me with a couple of my sisters. From left to right: Absa, me, Ramatou, NdeyFatou

And finally, a picture of my mothers. Ya-Magat is sitting and she is the first wife/my main mother. Yatep-Jole is my second mother.

Alright I’ve rambled enough for now. So I’ll say boo ndiiki, inshallah.

From the top...

It's amazing that the thing I've had the least motivation to do this past week was start a blog. But here is proof that miracles do happen...

So this past week I started my 27 month long service in Senegal with the Peace Corps! It started with all 55 Senegal agriculture trainees arriving in DC last Monday. From there we made the not too long flight (8 hours 10 minutes) to Senegal to start our African adventure.

Since arriving we've been under compound arrest until we go through safety training. (You should be happy about that info parents :) ) However, this doesn't mean that we haven't had anything to do. Every day we've been in meetings and classes learning all about the Senegalese culture, the wolof language, and today we even did a bit of compost making. The most difficult cultural difference here is that they don't use their left hands, because there left hands are used for...this:

These are the really nice restrooms by the way. Where I'm going I won't have anything nearly as posh.

Senegalese food, much like the culture, is very rich. And delicious. It's so very very delicious. In fact most volunteers here gain weight. Senegalese women think they haven't been a good host if you you don't gain weight. Thankfully it is completely ok to not eat everything placed in front of you.

According to the sign in front you can tell by this elephants ears that it is alert and ready to charge...even though it's lifeless...

In closing here are two pictures of where I've been living the past couple days. 

Entry way to the hospital

View from our giant pagoda