Heather in Senegal

2008-07-01T06:39:00.000-07:00

Magic, or medicine, comes in many forms in Senegal, from powders to paper to animal pieces. People wear bands or shells, burn objects, eat things, and bathe in others. At worst this business can be lethal. A woman recently died because the powders she was given to force a miscarriage poisoned her. Magic can be found in common items like padlocks if handled with the right intent. I have commisioned a few arm bands to be made to protect people from sickness or evil, but for the right price they can be made to give people the power to become invisible, make people invulnerable to bullets, and all sorts of other positive affects. The less common an animal skins the greater its strength.

Before a recent trip up to Dakar my host mother asked if I would bring carry something to her daughters living there. I despise the woman, so I tried to refuse, insisting that I would not have time to travel around Dakar and find her daughters (cab drivers don't know where to find streets, let alone addresses, so it's impossible to get to a house if you don't know where it is.) but she told me they would come to meet me. I argued that I didn't have much space in my bag, but she promised it would be a small package. I gave in, and on the day I was to leave she handed me a plastic bag full of "medicine" for her daughters. I asked if they were sick. "No," she said, "It's just that sometimes children need medicine made by their mother."

In the bag was one very leaky bottle. She said if I just held it upright in my lap for the twelve hour ride it would not be a problem. I told her I couldn't do that and tried to return the bag to her, but she started calling neighbors over to see how little I was willing to do for her, so finally I just biked away, carefully holding the bag in one hand.

I went to the Peace Corps house where I met another volunteer who was going to Dakar with me. We tore into the bag to get a closer look at the medicine and fix the bottle. Through the bag I had been able to feel soft roundish items, and I was concerned we would find bird bodies. Instead, we found three bags filled with dark powders, a page of Arabic writing, and a bottle sealed only by a black plastic bag tied to the top. We poured the contents into a water bottle with a screw-on lid, hopefully not breaking any magical connections. We sniffed and closely examined the liquid. As far as we could figure it was water with bits of black plastic bag inside. Hurrah for a new use for old bags? I wonder if the magical power of that part of the package was supposed to be its ability to force a toubob to hold and worry about it for the duration of a long and uncomfortable car ride.

The next time I was going to Dakar my mom asked me to bring more medicine to my sisters. While she asked this, relatives visiting from Dakar were sitting in the compound. Even my Senegalese boss agrees that a primary purpose of this "medicine" was to demonstrate her control over her toubob.

Seck, the gardener with whom I work, has frequently spoken of magic. When his children and wife have been sick, in addition to buying western medicines, he has traveled far and paid hefty sums for special locally made medicines and talismans. He believes that the garden has failed to give him profit because of magic done by his enemies, and his spiritual leader agrees. He found a U-lock buried in the garden and thinks this item responsible for his poor harvest.

A few days ago he suddenly turned to me and, with great remorse, told me he knew why he and Jenny, the last volunteer, did not get along. He told me that Pisco's mother was doing magic against Seck. Seck told me that Pisco's mother has killed all of their relatives who dared visit because she does not want to share the land with them. He said she was jealous of his relationship with Jenny, so she waited until the wind was blowing towards him and then burned some powders. The smoke came to him and caused all his troubles. He said Pisco's mother then bewitched Jenny and forced her to wear a magical arm band that would set her against Seck. Seck was pained by the fact that it took him so long to figure this out, and that it was too late to tell Jenny that he understood what happened and held nothing against her. I promised to tell Jenny, and assured him she would see their falling out was the work of that evil woman. Pisco is a painter, a good gardener, and a friendly and generous man, all of which makes Seck jealous. His mother is an ancient woman who is always extremely sweet and gentle when I visit. Jenny had her arm band made and had nothing at all put inside it. But I've come to care for Seck, and if this version of things purifies his memory of Jenny, smoothing over the year of animosity, he's welcome to it.

A good friend of mine lives in a village rife with magic, and she says she has seen people healed through it. She is not completely sold on it, but between what she has observed and the fact that people are sent to her village's medicine men by western-trained doctors and nurses, she believes there's something to it.

2008-04-15T03:54:00.001-07:00

My dear friend Ellia has pointed out that I haven't said a thing about what I'm doing after Peace Corps. I've thought of this blog as a forum for my Senegal life, so I haven't been talking about life afterwards, but in truth, post-Senegal life has been a huge preoccupation lately.
So, the plan: I will fly out of Senegal on April 25th and go to London. After three days of museums and parks, I am going to Ireland, where I plan to attend a few music camps, hike and lounge in gorgeous settings, and study fiddling in small town pubs. Then comes the even more exciting part. After a month in Ireland I will meet Ellia, otherwise known as Sweet Soubrette (www.sweetsoubrette.com), the famed ukuleleist, in Brussels, and we will begin a two week tour, performing in venues and on the streets of Brussels, Paris, Marseille, and anywhere the wind takes us. I've been listening to her album constantly, playing along with it, and upping my violin practice schedule in hopes that when we meet in Europe I'll be able to sound good next to her.
Ellia and I have been close friends for twenty years now. Seeing her after Senegal would be great. Seeing her in Europe would be a thrill. Seeing her in Europe, working on music with her, and playing for audiences... I don't see how my close-of-service trip could get any better.

2008-04-15T03:37:00.000-07:00

While I was at a party last week I spotted a woman with elaborately henna'd feet. I've been wanting to have this done to me for almost two years. I pointed her out to my sister, Assu, and told her I wanted her to paint me up. She offered to take me to a salon, but I was picturing something more intimate, so she agreed to do it. We set a date and I gave her money to buy the supplies.

When I got home last night Assu was cooking tea (a seemingly endless process of pouring it from one shot glass to another and back into the little kettle). On seeing me she passed off the job to another kid, and she and Nene, my older sister, sequestered themselves in Nene's room. After about fifteen minutes they sent out a little kid to summon me.

I took off my shoes outside the house, entered the front area, pushed aside the curtain, and found my sisters sitting on the floor slicing medical tape into thin strips on a metal platter. They beckoned me in, took one look at my feet, and sent me back out to wash them. Everyone picks on my foot-washing. When I came back they started taping me up.

Nene took my feet and ran full strips of tape along the sides like racing stripes. Then, thinking better of it, she went back and sliced the tape horizontally and pulled the pieces apart, giving me parallel stripes. While she did this, Assu took the thin strips off the metal platter and wrapped them around my fingertips. Nene used my free fingers to hold the roll of tape, and she cut off thin pieces and connected the stripes on my feet, making a series of squares.

After giving me stripes on my fingertips, toes, and the sides of my feet, they moved on to my palms. I had gathered by now that Nene and Assu were not terrribly experienced at this stuff. The tape was painstakingly but sloppily cut, and the placements were a bit haphazard. I caught the pair of them exchanging nervous looks when it came time to do my palms. They had no clear idea on what to do, and offered to write my boyfriend's name or mine. I passed on that, so they gave me squiggles and Xes.

The taping process to a long long time, and we were all yawning by the time they finished. Happily, the smearing process went quickly and involved a bit of a foot massage, as Assu rubbed the henna paste into my skin. I thought we were nearly done when they started applying the henna, but there was still the wrapping. They cut strips from plastic bags and individually tied off each of my fingers and toes, and then put my hands and feet into bags. They told me to put on socks, but I couldn't manage with my coated and mittened hands, so Nene had to put the socks on me. Before I could get into bed I had to call Assu and ask her to take the band out of my hair. I slept poorly, dreaming the henna didn't take or that I ripped off the bags in my sleep and my sisters were disappointed in me.

In the morning the process surprised me by not being over. Assu helped me scrape the henna off my skin, reminding me to be careful not to remove the tape. People had been telling me the henna would color my skin black, and they were excited about how good that would look on white skin, so I was pretty surprised to find myself bright orange. When we finally had all the henna off, Assu smeared a mixture that looked like water and large salt crystals all over my hands and feet. I have heard that sometimes this process involves rat poison. Already committed, I chose not to ask what was in the mix. I kept this on until it dried, and then Nene gave me permission to take off the tape and wash my skin.

I am still pretty orange, but the tops of my fingers and toes are black. All day long people have been complimenting me. Family friends, strangers on the street, they all seem surprised and delighted to see me henna'd. I get the impression it is taken as a sign of my fondness for the culture. I'll wave at people, and I know they can't see the design, only the color, but they'll enthusiastically tell me how pretty it looks.

2008-04-15T03:33:00.000-07:00

I've hit the "sweet spot." After nearly two years in Kolda I am comfortable with my Pulaar, I have friends, I know where to go, who to avoid, how to joke with people, how to take care of myself, and I'm involved with successful gardening projects. I can greet a woman who is lounging on a mat under a mango tree, sit with her, eat with her and her kids when someone brings over a lunch bowl, and join her in teasing the people who walk past. I'm comfortable. Also, knowing I'll be leaving soon, and that I am doing things here for the last times, has a way of making things sweeter.

Yesterday afternoon Seck didn't come to the garden. A friend of his is visiting from Spain, so it was just me, his daughters, and two younger kids. All we had to do was water, and with a hose it's really a one person job. If we had a well we'd all be working and would probably finish faster, and we would never have to worry about the water getting shut off. Of course, then our hands would be far more callused and we'd be fantasizing about the ease of hoses. We tried to divide the work by using the watering can, but since the water has to come from the hose it doesn't save anything, so eventually Nafi took over watering and the rest of us just messed around.

Awa, the kids, and I chased one another around the garden trying to grab other peoples's hands and force them to hit themselves. We danced, pretended to threaten one another with rocks, and threw water. Eventually we mellowed. Awa took over the watering, Nafi sat on a rock, and I sat on the old tire beside her, eventually lowering in it so I could lean back on the inner rim. It was a golden, picturesque scene. The sun was setting, giving us pink and purple clouds and coolish air, Nafi and I were chatting about nothing, and Awa was singing. My coming departure makes me savor and focus more thought on times like these. I was fully at ease in the garden with these kids. It felt like a triumph, a comfort won by almost two years of time and work.

It's so odd that these two years are almost over, and that so much of my life here now reminds me of older parts of my life. Awa's voice took me back to times I've dozed with my head in her lap as she sang to me. The garden itself holds countless memories of interactions with Seck and the range of emotions I've felt while trying gardening techniques, laboring, and lounging here. Finding myself so comfortable sitting in a tire got me thinking about how much tires are part of my life here. I've pulled them out of dumps, had kids retrieve them, bought them off mechanics, transported them, cut them, planted in them, taught people to plant in them, planned days around them, swung from them, bounced on them, sat in them, smelled them burning, and seen them lying everywhere. Chatting in Pulaar makes me remember struggling with Pulaar and feeling so exhausted by it. I'm by no means brilliant at it now, but I can have conversations, hear stories, and not feel the once constant stress from the language.

2008-04-15T03:30:00.000-07:00

After the final rains last fall, the Casamance River, which cuts across Kolda, rapidly went down. In the first rainless week it looked as though a dam somewhere downstream had been unblocked. Trees that had spent the summer standing in two feet of water were suddenly on land. The poles that supported the ramshackle walking bridge, the body of which washed away over the summer, became visible again. A month after the rains stopped the river no longer flowed visibly. On a windless day trees and clouds were reflected flawlessly.

The rains here, especially the first few, are much celebrated. Kids and Peace Corps volunteers dance in the street. Everything smells better. The sandy roads become bikeable again. The rains bring mangos, relief from the heat, thrilling thunder, stunning lightening shows, a glowing verdant landscape, mangos, gardening and farming opportunities, and the frequent occasion of being stuck indoors and forced to cozy up with a good book. And something about the rains just feels good. Once the season gets underway the rains come with dramatic, apocolyptic force. My first summer here the winds and pounding rain made me fear for my hut. It's exhilerating to bike through blankets of pouring rain or to wade calf deep down a muddy market road. Last summer I had a nice, "holy cow how did this get to be my life," moment one night while biking home in a thunder storm. After one especially loud crash the electricity went out. From then on I could only see the path during bursts of lightening. In the absence of lightening I was left in pitch black darkness. I sped as fast as I could during the moments of visibility, trying to sight any rocks, parked cars, or deep muddy sand traps on the path ahead, and then I pedaled slowly and hopefully during the brief dark spells. I made it home feeling triumphant.

I have delighted in the rains, and both years here I eagerly watched the river as a measure. Because it rains to the east before it hits Kolda, the river swells slightly before our rains begin. I remember stopping my bike on the bridge in town to gaze down at the dry river bed, then the muddy river bed, then the gorgeous sight of water forming a continuous line crossing under the bridge, and finally the day when it first actively flowed west. I watched the river rise, covering the garbage, the riverside gardens, my reading spot under my chosen tree, and eventually the footbridge. It was reminiscent of the thrill of watching snow accumulate.

Signs of our distance now from the last rains abound. The ground is littered with dead leaves, the cows, who thrive on rainfed growth, are showing their rib bones, the sandy roads are getting impassible on bike, kids playing soccer create field-wide auras of kicked-up dust visible and smellable from far off, we had to lengthen the well's rope to make the bucket reach the sinking water, and every day is hotter than the last. (I got a kick out of a new volunteer asking, "Is this as hot as it gets?" We're just getting started.) And, most of all, the river is very low now. At its lowest point it's a muddy garbage dump. There's a thin coating of green grass, the only grass in town, on either side of the river showing how much it has recently sunk. I have barely a month left in Kolda, and every day now I can see the water line changing and the river growing more narrow.

I have such mixed feelings about leaving Senegal. Simply, it's really really strange to know I'm going soon. Often I can forget about it, or at least quiet the idea, but the sight of the dried up river, which I won't be here to see refill, is like a kitchen timer that has nearly ticked down to zero, and it always brings me back to the fact of my imminent departure, which I'm at a loss of how to deal with.

2008-04-15T03:29:00.001-07:00

My host family's cat, Aqua, trotted into my hut last night after I turned off the light. She's taken to visiting me as I'm going to bed. I love this habit of hers. I began petting her and felt something stuck to her hind quarters. I turned on the light and discovered it wasn't to so much as in. There was a plastic bag protruding from her anus.

Everything here comes in plastic bags. Juice, vegetables, coffee, peanut butter, and anything else you want, is available in a plastic bag. Take it out of the bag, and it leaves a bag with some tasty residue left in it. The poor cat must not have been able to resist the temptation.

I tried to pull it out, but she emphatically refused. I snipped it off, close to her body, so that no one else could tug, and so it wouldn't get caught on anything. Never has a bag smelled so foul.

I had a nightmare about the plastic getting tangled in her intestines, but when she hopped onto my windowsil in the morning, she was as merry as ever and had no plastic sticking out of her. She's not too bright. In a few minutes I caught her chewing on one of my old bags of peanut butter.

Garbage is everywhere. I recently saw the classic example of the danger of having no trash management. A cheefuly little girl was playing on the rubbish heap beside her mother's boutique and came back holding an old water bottle, a D battery, and a syringe with a very long needle on it. The more official doctors have disposal methods: they drop syringes down their toilet holes. This one probably came off the black market.

The garbage system here has it advantages. Everything gets reused many many times. One person's broken bucket might be the perfect plastic for another person to melt onto an old oil drum and patch its holes. Old powdered milk bags can be new gardening containers. In the US, garbage goes where most of us will never see it, so there's no chance of some discarded object inspiring a passerby to adopt it for a new use. Here, the average trash heap has extremely little that is still in good enough shape to be identified, excluding plastic bags.

I came to the garden once with an art magazine. A featured photographer had a spread of photos of garbage. In one picture it was tires as far as the eye could see. Another had couches. My gardener's daughter was most struck by the landfill overflowing with cell phones. She asked what was going on in the picture, and when I explained that they were all broken, she scoffed. "Send them to Africa," she said. "They may be broken to you, but we'd fix them." A few months later I found my cell phone in a bed sheet that I had soaked and was washing. The phone wouldn't turn on anymore. I gave it up for broken and bought a new one. It doesn't work as well as it once did, but the guy I gave it to found a way to fix it enough for basic use.

2008-04-15T03:28:00.000-07:00

December
I spent December on vacation in Italy. It was wonderful as European vacations are meant to be, so I'll just give it a quick description. Mom and Jim met me in Rome. I had my biggest taste of culture shock at the airport when I found myself wanting to talk with strangers and realized they were shying away from me. I was acting like a Pulaar, expecting everyone to be willing to chat and reveal personal information. I nearly teased a taciturn fellow about my being his wife, just to get the conversation going, before I caught myself. After this, everything felt familiar and natural.

It was great spending time with Mom and Jim. We visited the Pope and got his blessings, toured the Vatican, the Pantheon, the Coloseum, the Capuchin monks, and many other fine sights. The food was stunning, and the Christmas decorations and markets were charming. My mother kept a daily journal which I hope she will post.

After two weeks in Rome I was left on my own, and I traveled up to Florence. The train was ridiculously nice. After the potholes, heat, tight quarters, smells, hours and hours, and hours of travel in Senegal, which happens on no schedule and only takes place when the car fills, it was a pleasure to have a spacious, cool, smooth, swift, and timely mode of transit that had a bathroom on board. Not to mention the scenery. I gasped at the sight of snow.

I passed a few days in Florence's museums, my favorite of which was a small one filled with mosaics, and I took a day trip to Pisa (which is so much more than just a leaning tower). I found that at least half of the street vendors in Florence were Senegalese. It gave me a kick to be able to practice my Pulaar, but none of them seemed especially surprised by it. I can go down the path from my hut and find people amazed at a white girl speaking Pulaar in a region where the majority is Pulaar, but in Italy it didn't much phase anyone.

From Florence I traveled to Venice with a few people I met at the hostel. We arrived at night, and I think this is the best way to meet this city. It felt like we were entering a majestic and lyrical world. After the intense touring of Rome and Florence, I meandered around Venice and spent a long time lost. The highlights here were the pigeons, the church with a wall to wall mosaic floor, the Guggenheim museum, the island of Murano, a visual candy store, where nearly every store is a stained glass shop or factory, and the other travelers at the hostel.

Next was Cinque Terra, one of the most beautiful places on earth. I arrived on Christmas eve. On Christmas day the Brazilians who were staying with me at the hostel and I hiked the trail along the coast, past the narrow shelves of vineyards, and up and down the hills. Christmas day was the perfect day to do the trip. There was nearly no one on the trail besides us and the fat felines who sat preening at every picnic spot. I spent the next week at Cinque Terra and saw the five towns and the trail steadily grow more crowded. I hiked on side trails, sat by the ocean, cooked broccoli and mushrooms with every meal, and attended a klezmer and a gospel concert. LOvely!

The day before I was to leave Italy I took a train to Milan where the Brazilians met me, gave me a three hour tour of the city, and took me to their apartment. They live with a couple and their new baby. I was received with open arms and great warmth. We had no one common language, but using English, French, Portugese, and hands and grins, we were able to joke and compare life in Brazil, Senegal, and Italy. It surprised me how sweet it felt to be at home again with a western family.

Getting home was a small fiasco. Senegal has an agreement with Europe and the US about not letting people enter Senegal without proof of residency or proof of intent to leave within three months. I learned this from the woman at the airport who refused to issue me a boarding pass. My Peace Corps passport and ID would not suffice, and no airline nearby sold easily refundable tickets. My request to see a manager brought me a man who yelled at me about the US treatment of Mexican immigrants. When the plane was due to leave in thirty minutes, the woman finally printedme a ticket to Lisbon, where I was scheduled to have long layover. When I tried to get my ticket for Senegal in Lisbon this woman told me Milan had called about me. International sensation, dying to sneak into Senegal and wreck the place, am I. She told me to wait a while. I couldn't get through to Senegal, so I called my mom for advice. She phoned Peace Corps and got someone in DC who said, "Yes, this happens. Sometimes volunteers have to wait a few days before they can return to their countries." And yet it is never mentioned in training, and we are not given any papers to satisfy the airlines. Cute. The head of security in Senegal was more willing to help, but he had no luck speaking to airline personnel. Eventually I found a merry man who decided to give me a New Year's present, and he overroad the computer program to issue me my boarding pass. When I got to the airport in Milan I wasn't thrilled about returning to Senegal, but the ordeal got me so wound up that I leapt with joy when I finally got the pass. I returned home to Senegal in a far more gleeful and grateful state than I would have otherwise.

2008-04-06T06:18:00.001-07:00

Earlier this week my sister, Nene, came to my window while I was eating dinner and tossed me a mint sucking candy, inviting me to a baby-naming ceremony. In place of invitations families buy bags of candy and hand them out with verbal notice of the upcoming party.
I was running around this morning, going to a garden and visiting a friend at her hut, so I didn't get to the party until after lunch. By the time I arrived there were about two hundred sitting together in an outline of a square in the sandy road outside the newborn's compound, fully blocking the road. The women were all dressed in fancy outfits, most in bright oranges, reds, and blues, and many had their faces done up with an extreme amount of make-up. The beauty standard here involves a lot of heavy face paint. Everyone had their hair done up in new mesh. I sat with some friends of mine who were selling bags of frozen juice to the other guests and helped distribute the bags to people who were passing their money down the line of chairs.
The newborn's family is wealthy, so instead of a simple gathering garnished with some cookies, or a bigger one with a drummer, this party had a stereo going inside the compound and a live band setting up outside on the edge of the square where we all sat. While the band tuned women brought out buckets of water which they sprinkled on the sand; if they didn't dampen the ground the deep loose sand would make for awkward dancing and a cloud of dust.
My friends teased me, telling me my boyfriend was here so I better plan on dancing well or else they'd lure him away. They said something about putting my name on a list, but I thought they were just joking. However, when the band finally got started a singer performed one verse of a song and then said that before anything else could happen Dienabou Ba had to get up and dance. I'm used to being the center of attention, but this surprised me. I demured for a bit, but with two hundred people staring at me, the music drawing more by the second, and all waiting for me to dance, I had little choice. After I did a satisfactory amount of wiggling in front of everyone, I took the microphone and sang my friends's names and taunting them, daring them to come dance. They laughed appreciatively, but only much later, after many dancing old women had filled the square, did they rise from their seats.
The band had two electric guitar players, an electric bassist, a drummer, and three singers. The two women singers wore head scarves, as most women here do, and when there were lulls in the dancing they would swing their scarves around and lay them on the ground in front of their friends or atop their heads. This forced their friends to start dancing, either to return the scarf, or to dance with it briefly and then lay it in front of another woman. Aside from the musicians, men were absent. Young boys stood close outside the square, watching. Teenaged boys sat further off, but within eyeshot. Only one male rose to dance, and he did so in a clownish manner.
I left long before the party ended. The music was too loud for me. The band had four gigantic speakers that appeared to be playing at full volume, and the stereo inside the compound sounded like it had a similar set-up. Straw huts and wells all around, but music amplification to put rock stars to shame.

2008-04-06T06:09:00.000-07:00

Taking a bike on a subway will never again feel like a hassle, for I have now taken a dog in a sept-place. Alexis left Kolda, and her dog, Guinness, was far too accustomed to Toubob life to be left on her own, so Kristal volunteered to adopt her, and I volunteered to handle transport.
I tried feeding her a tasty bowl of milk and Nyquil before the trip, but she expressed her distaste with a colorful puddle of puke. She was one very awake and frisky puppy when we went to catch a car, and while we were at the garage she slipped out of her leash. Many men and I set off running after her, though after she trotted right past a few men I realized I was the only one actually trying to make contact. Eventually she stopped to relieve herself and I pounced.
I expected the worst in trying to buy a seat for Guinness, and accepting this ahead of time led me to being taken for four times the correct price. Clearly, resignation doesn't help matters. I should've just demanded what was fair for two seats.
Guinness and I sat in the back with one other person. She was beside me, on top of me, bouncing on me, trying to nuzzle people, vocally expressing her views on the road's swiss cheese condition, and occasionally making ominous moves towards the window. Luckily, she's an extremely good natured dog, so pinning her to me and grabbing her by the face to hold her mouth shut brought me no bites.
We spilled out of the car in Kristal's road-town six hours after we'd left the house. We looked at each other with the tired but proud expressions of victorious athletes too beat to do more than acknowledge the win. Then she stretched, yawned, and lay down in the sand. I wanted to do that. Kristal and I sat in the shade, waiting for the heat of the day to pass before we started walking to her village. We attracted a crowd of little girls. We greeted them and chatted briefly with them, but mostly continued our conversaton in English. The girls watched us, and when there were so many that it was hard to get good views of us, they sat between us so we had to lean and twist just to see each other's face.
The day cooled, and the three of us walked out to the village. Guinness, off a leash and in the bush for the first time, was a picture of delight. She ran in the fields, frolicking like her life depended on it. She kept tabs on us, never getting too far away, but for the most part we only saw her when she was an orange and white arc leaping over the weeds.

2008-04-06T06:02:00.000-07:00

I just got back from visiting my friend Laura in her village. It's such a pleasure to be in a place where I can speak Pulaar, bask in the beauty of Senegal, and have no work or social stress. I'm never so relaxed as I am in other people's villages. I love lounging in another volunteer's backyard (village volunteers have fenced in land around their toilet holes), out of sight but within earshot of Pulaars and the animals, reading in the shade or having a long rambling conversation. I might do virtually the same thing in Kolda, but never without some level of guilt about excluding the Pulaars. In most villages that I've visited, the locals understand that I have traveled far to talk with my friend, and they might joke about how we ramble on for hours in our fast English, but they appreciate that we need this and might go so far as to instruct my friend on how to be a good host.
We went to the nearby cashew-apple orchard every day. I regret that I did not bring my camera. When Laura gives me her photos I'll load them to this site. The orchard was planted one generation ago on a spot where a few fields meet, making it a sudden burst of trees on an otherwise flat landscape. We would go after lunch, in the heat of the day, so the orchard looked like a heaven-sent oasis. As soon as we got under the leafy awning the temperature dropped significantly. I've only ever bought cashew-apples in town, so I had to be taught to pick them. The first step was obvious: we told the kids who followed us to get us some apples. Then we started hunting along with them, and Laura taught me to scour the ground for small bursts of the red and yellow skins. No one plucks these apples from trees; they are only believed to be ripe if they have fallen. Some of the boys hurried this along by climbing up the trees (vertical, limbless trunks, and the boys looked as if they were walking up stairs) and shaking the high branches until apples rained down. At first I would pick up an apple, see it was half-eaten, and drop it, but Laura and the boys quickly corrected me. The birds only go for the best, so a half-eaten apple is considered a great find.
The orchard's caretaker is a middle-aged deaf man whose father planted the orchard. He sweeps the ground daily, making apples easier to find, and giving snakes, who are attracted to cashew trees, fewer places to hide. He keeps a bucket of water on hand so people can dip in the apples and rinse them off. Of course, before eating an apple one must twist off the cashew. He asks that diners toss these in a pile, and he sells them in town. One time when we came he was collecting honey from the woven structures he had attached to the trees, and another time he and the boys were cutting stalks into thin strips that will be woven into rope. He owns one of the gardens in the village. In all, he and his wife have one of the wealthiest compounds in the village. He was never taught an official sign language, but Laura and I were able to converse with him via the boys, who seemed to be able to communicate perfectly with him.
An NGO helped a womens group in Laura's village start a garden shortly before she came. When they divided plots for this spring's crop Laura asked for a section. She was away when they divided the plots, and saved nothing for her. When they saw she was hurt to be excluded they explained that they thought she would just help with everyone's. The group's leader gave Laura a small corner of her own plot. So, every morning and afternoon she had to go water. I slept through the morning shifts but helped in the afternoon. I loved how the women got such a kick out of me. It wasn't enough that they got one toubob who speaks Pulaar, but now another appears? We exchanged the usual teasings and jokes, and additionally they taunted me about not being able to pull water from the well. So, of course, in I stepped, and in no time was pulling in rhythm with one of the women. Faster than the eye could see, our hands were flying over each other's to pull the rope. The others cheered me on, and delighted at their approval, I insisted on pulling until all the buckets were full. Tom Sawyer and these Pulaar women.
Every morning and every afternoon the women line up by the well, have arguments about the line, pull innumerable buckets of water, and lug the pails to their garden plots. It won't end this ordeal, but I talked to a few of the women about mulching, and this should help. The women got it, and were quick to tell pass it on to the women who were still hauling water. "It'll block the sun and keep the ground wet longer," "the material will decompose and help the soil," "it'll reduce the number of weeds," - it feels so good when they really get it and are excited about it. Once they saw I knew something about gardening they asked if I had any advice on their pest problem. The next day Laura and I brought garlic and soap to the garden, one of her friends brought a pounder, and we made and applied an organic pesticide. I answered a few other questions about gardenting. It was glorious to be the visiting specialist.
Mostly, Laura and I walked. Her family chastised her for taking her guest out in the heat of the day, but we both loved strolling deep in the bush. We found a cemetery in which each grave was surrounded by waist-high walls of wooden stakes sunk into the ground. We sat under a mango tree until a bull pacing near us started giving us dirty looks and facing us with a disconcerting stance. Locals here will shoo bulls away as they would cats, and I have never heard of a bull goring anyone, but I figured I'd feel silly later explaining a gash in my side with, "I didn't think big horned bulls did that kind of thing," so we moved on. He promptly sat in our spot. We traversed fields, followed cow paths, speculated on the changes to come with the rains, and sweat rediculous amounts. It was lovely.
Laura's family gave us lunches, and we had dinner with one of her coworkers. The meals were delicious affairs, but by the second day I was craving vegetables. I do like village life. People are kinder there. Everyone knows you. The landscape is far prettier than in the city. The air is cooler. I could live there. But it may be a better place to visit.

2008-03-21T11:40:00.000-07:00

Weavers have the best work places of anyone around here. They set their looms in a brush of mango trees, moving up hill through the year as the field beside them floods. It is quiet in the weavers's grove, save the sounds of passing animals and the clacking of thin wood hitting wood, coming from the pedals and, I think, the yarn-wrapped sticks the men toss through the weave (I appologize for my lack of terminology). To me their looms look like brilliant contraptions of economy. With stunningly little wood and metal they construct foot-powered weaving machines. They stretch their yarn maybe 200 feet ahead of them in the sand. As a man creates fabric he rolls it onto a spool in his lap.

In Dakar I have seen weavers working on busy sidewalks. While the men in Kolda only make a plain white cloth, weavers in Dakar employ young boys to help with patterns. As the men work the pedals and toss the yarn back and forth through the weave, the boys, one per machine, insert and remove cards at lightening speed, changing the colors that are encorporated in each row, creating beautifuly geometric paterns.

Ordinarily people are delighted when I want to take their pictures. The most common complaint I get when I take out my camera concerns not giving people fair warning and time to change into their fancy clothing. The weavers, however, were a stickier bunch. The first man I chatted up demanded cash. He scoffed at my offered sum and wouldn't suggest an amount, so with a dozen men in the mango grove, I walked away. The second, after the usual greetings and teasings about my becoming his third wife, asked about my religion. He was not hostile to Judaism, but he said I really should be Muslim. When I asked about taking photos he said he would only allow it if I first prayed like a Muslim. Ibrahima, the boy in the photograph was by far the youngest of the weavers. I expected him to follow his elders's model, but instead found him shy but agreeable about being photographed.

2008-03-21T11:37:00.000-07:00

Nov 1
Everything is finally drying after the rains, so people are now burning the trash that collected all summer, and then setting extra fires to get rid of termites and other bugs. The air around town stinks. I can't bike anywhere without going through a few clouds of foul smoke. It was gratifying to have a conversation about this with an old man whom I'm friends with. He agreed it's absurd how many fires are going these days, as well as the things people are burning. Tires, batteries, plastic, anything. "Don't they know about cancer?" he asked. Many of the streams of smoke make my nose burn.
Along with the start of the dry season and its smoke comes the cold weather. Never mind the actual temperature, it feels cold to me. I've had the sniffles for weeks. Locals have been laughing at how badly I'm handling the cold. My sister and I had a wonderful exchange about this yesterday. My sniffles grown into a fever, and I've been bumbling around in a fuzzy blanket and a ski hat. I went outside to sit in the sun and warm up, and found she was heating tea for herself. The changing weather made her sick too. She completely understood when I said the cold was making my body feel like it's closing, and that I missed the way my body opens in the hotter months. She bemoaned the lousy weather situation of Senegal, how we get months and months of heat followed by a sudden cold spell, too brief to allow acclimatization, just long enough to mess with us and make us unhappy when the heat returns. I'm suspect that back in my NY life this temperature would've been cause for shorts, but now I am bonding with my Senegalese sister about how we wish the sun would hurry up and return us to the warm sweaty weather in which our bodies thrive. Hurrah for acclimatization.

2007-11-06T09:02:00.000-08:00

Last night, holding a copy of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row, freshly flown in from the USA, I got a craving for an idyll reading spot. Two hammock support poles are in the ground immediately outside our compound, but the man who dug the holes takes his hammock into his hut when it's not in use, and I've been lazy about commisioning one for myself.

So I had to walk three households away to Hawa's compound, where I have noticed that not only does she have a hammock in front for her husband, but also a smaller one towards the back of her yard. I chatted with her family for a few minutes and then explained my need. They smiled sympathetically at my seemingly quixotic plan, and reminded me that they don't have electricity. I whipped a candle out of my bag and they invited me to go swing.

The hammock is tied to two poles stuck in the ground directly under a mango tree. It is close to the toilet hut, a straw roofed round hut with a six foot diameter and a hole in the center of the floor. The shape of the hole is held by a sawed off ceramic canister. When not in use it is covered by a thick pot lid, so there is no smell. As bathrooms go, and especially in comparison to the usual small rectangular tin-roofed stinky oven, this one is pretty aesthetic.

I lit my candle, lay back, and began to read about the whores and gamblers, or saints and martyrs, of Monterey. The already dark night was exagerated by my candle's flame, so that all I could see was my hand, the book, a vague feet-like shadow, and the stars above. After a few minutes Hawa sent her daugher over with a wooden bench, which she placed next to me and, using hot wax as glue, turned into a giant candle holder.

The scene was so perfect that it felt decadent. Hammock, mango tree, stars, grasshopper and frog serenade, distant conversation in Pulaar, darkness, and Steinbeck.

2007-11-05T03:48:00.000-08:00

For the past few weeks there have been daily soccer games at the stadium, with cheering that can be heard kilometers away. Teenaged boys representing their neighborhoods play to full houses. They are in the finals of their tournament now. When Nene told me that a friend of ours coaches a team that has been on a winning streak, I said we should go watch.
The stadium has one giant cement bleacher that can probably fit about 500 people. The game started at 16:00, and people started filling the bleacher at 14:00. By the time we arrived police with giant guns on their backs were guarding the entrances to the bleachers, blocking the path. A knee-high cement fence surrounds the sandy field, and except where weeds have grown to high, people were huddled five deep around the fence. Nene, Assu, who lives next door, and I found a spot by the fence where we could see one goalpost and a quarter of the field.
Vendors set up shop selling small piles of peanuts, bags of juice, and water. A couple men were hawking bags of dried mango slices. "Mangos! Hey, getchur mangos!"
I never feel so white as I do when traveling or at big events. I feel then as if I glow, more neon glow in the dark white than the tanning peach that I am. But being with friends made a world of difference. When I am by myself or with other Toubobs kids steal strokes of my arms and people call out saying what they think of me. Today I got virtually none of that. Aha, this is that integration and safety in community business they've been talking about.
There was no scoreboard, and definately no screen showing instant replays, but someone in the stands was narrating the game over a loudspeaker, and during half time and after key plays dance music would overtake the stadium. Everyone would bounce along.
Throughout the game one of the omnipresent goats of Kolda grazed behind the southern goalpost, completely unfazed by the noise and the occasional stray ball.
Our team won, 2-1. We left a bit before the end of the game because Nene was scared to be in the stadium when everyone was pouring towards and trying to squeeze through the front gate. We could hear the announcing as we walked away, as well as the final cheering marking the finish. Almost immediately afterwards the parade of motorcycles and bicycles (no one owns cars) came pouring out. Those going in our direction were from the winning neighborhood, and they raced home, often two to a bike, hands in the air waiving their shirts in victory, as if guaranteed immortality.

2007-11-05T03:27:00.000-08:00

"Some people see the cup as half full, some see it half empty, and the Peace Corps Volunteer sees the cup and thinks, 'hey, I could take a bath with that.'"
I heard the joke a few days ago, and today, with only about a cup of water left in my bucket and humidity making the well looking oh so much further away than normal, I decided to test the veracity of the quip.
I dunked a semi-dirty shirt into my bucket and then wrapped it around my bar of soap. Vigorously scrubbing with this gave me a good lather. I wrung out the shirt, put a bit more water on it and rewrung to get rid of the soap suds, and then dipped it a few more times to wipe the soap off my body. I wound up satisfactorily clean and with a shirt that should be good for another day or two. I'd take a running water shower in a second, but it's nice to know how much I can do with just a puddle's worth of water.

2007-10-27T05:23:00.000-07:00

When I go to weddings parties I try to get in with the women who are cooking. It's fun to peel vegetables and make juice with them. I especially enjoy the juice making. It usually falls to the younger women to do it, and when it's a wedding in my neighborhood, this means it's my friends. Someone once advised me to not watch when people cook, because whether or not I see how it's made, I am going to have to eat. The juice methods are a bit disconcerting. The juice is made in giant buckets. The fruit or the leaf that is the base is dropped in the water, and then while talking and coughing, the women use their hands to squeeze out the juice. Then sugar and other flavorings are added, and the mixture is stirred with a big ladle. We take turns tasting from the ladle. When the juice is prepared, the plastic bags come out. The first phase of making the juice doesn't involve many women. We might all be there, but only a few people are actually working. The bagging, however, is an efficient assembly line. Two women per bucket ladle a certain amount of juice into each bag before passing the bags to the rest of us who are waiting to tie the bags, using a very particular type of wrap-and-knot. A third team takes the bags, wipes them off if need be, and piles them in an empty bucket. By the end of the process we are all sticky and giddy from sugar intake.

2007-10-27T05:09:00.000-07:00

When the neighbor's chicken started hanging out in my hut I thought it was adorable. My family told me she had made the trek just to visit me, and I liked the novelty of having a chicken pay me a social call. A few minutes later she unceremoniously dropped a wet little gift on my freshly swept floor, and I chased her out. But when my will is tested against that of a chicken I come up short. She kept returning to my hut, and given the choice of chasing her out again and again, being unsocial and shutting my door, or sweeping up the occasional chicken scat, I chose the third. She has become a daily presence, and I quickly saw what a fool I had been, and what a blessing she was. To all my friends in NYC suffering the bed-bug infestation, I say, find a chicken! I can not kill my ants or termites myself. I would feel too guilty. But I relish the sight of my chicken friend pecking in the holes in my cement floor and under my mattress, devouring the little fiends who are responsible for my thin cement floor crumbling under my feet (I have fallen through twice, though only dropping an inch or two), the holes in my matress, the termite lines on my wall (see pic), the destruction of three evidently tasty books that I left too long on the floor, and so much extra dust in my hut. Murder, my fair chicken. May my hut be your buffet.

I also have a lot of spiders in my hut. They perch too high to be threatened by the chicken. I like spiders, and I figure these spiders are another line in my defense against malaria. But the problem with spiders is that they lay eggs, and when these eggs hatch tiny itchy baby spiders go running up my legs by the hundreds. I don't particularly mind this. They tickle, and then they go on to find their corners and suck the life out of mosquitos. But my boyfriend visited and said he could not sit on my couch so long as the dozen or so unhatched eggsacks remained woven to the bamboo-work. He threatened to be ruthless with the eggs, so I did my best to gently sweep them up and carry them outside. Despite my best intentions, I suspect many little spiders never came to be because of me. During my bucket bath the next morning I noticed something wedged deep in my bellybutton. I thought it might be a small piece of dry grass fallen from my roof, and I sent a fingernail down after it. It was a spider. Perhaps it was the mother of one of the eggsacks, furious about what I had done to her eggs, determined to reach and destroy mine? I have never before found a spider in there. I am through sweeping up eggsacks.
While I was in Dakar a pregnant pussycat moved into my hut. By the time I got home she and her kittens were living in a corner under my crumpled plastic sheets. We lived together in peace for a few days, and I was delighted by my new roomate. If I was in a room when she wanted to enter she would poke her head in the window and meow, I would leave, and she would jump in. Despite the great temptation when she was out, I never touched her young. I offered her water, and I gave her my most cherubic grin each time I passed her nest. But one day she left, and the sound of kittens tumbling under plastic was replaced by the quieter tumbling sounds of cockroaches. That corner is a storage place for me, so I had no reason to go there until I recently dropped some ginger on the tarp and it fell into the folds. I hestitantly lifted the plastic, and a colony of cockroaches glared at me. They stood their ground until I started to shake the plastic. I discovered a plastic bag under the tarp with a disturbingly kitten-ish weight to it. The image of a cold, abandonned kitten snuggling into a bag for warmth and for a coffin made me sick to my stomach. I have dealt with a mouse flattened under my bed, ostensibly killed by my sitting too suddenly, a lizard that I mortally wounded when sliding my suitcase across the floor, a mouse that died after nibbling a hole in a bag of pesticide I had irresponsibly left on the floor, a frog that went belly up and rigid in my front doorway, and countless dead cockroaches, but a dead kitten was too much. I called in a friend. He found it was my long missing bag of nails.

2007-10-27T04:35:00.000-07:00

Ellia Bisker, aka Sweet Soubrette, the ukuleleist of great renoun, recently put out her first album, titled Siren Song. I have not put any other ads on this site, but I was so impressed by this lady's fine sounds that I had to spread the word. The songs are sweet, clever, seductive, enchanting, and all-round wonderful. She has been compared to Dar Williams, Magnetic Fields, and Bob Dylan, and usually deemed a heap better than any of those oldies. You can listen to songs from her album at www.myspace.com/elliabisker, and there is a link on her page for buying the cd. If you are in the NYC area please go to one of her performances and throw flowers at her for me. Thanks.

2007-10-27T04:29:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday Alexis and I began our bike trip to Velingara, the next major town to the west, about 150km from Kolda. We had an ominous start, delayed for an hour by a sudden thunder storm, but when we got on the road it was under a beautiful cool grey cloud cover.

On our first day biked to Adam's village, about 50k away. Upon arrival, dripping sweat, we stook turns bathing in his backyard. At night, when I have to get out of bed to use the toilet, I am delighted to have an indoor bathroom. The rest of the time I am deeply envious of the volunteers who have outoor restrooms. These are deep holes in the ground covered with a cement lid that has a wide hole it. Outdoor bucket baths under the wide Senegalese sky, with maybe a mango tree giving shade, are heavenly. You can hear village sounds such as women pounding grains in their large wooden pestles, and depending on the specific location, you can see sheeps grazing, fields of corn, or the folks in the next compound. It feels healthy and holistic to wash outside. After our baths we spent a long time lazing around. It wasn't the longest ride I've ever taken, but it was certain the one I was least prepared for, and I was beat. Eventually Adam took us on a walk to the nearest boutique, where we bought food and tea to give his family. The people out here love him. He jokes with them and gives out small monetary gifts like a beneficent mafioso. He his village's first volunteer, and locals are still stunned to meet other white people who speak Pulaar. After I did a few short greetings with one man, he told me that in fact I couldn't speak Pulaar. I agreed with him, in Pulaar, and went on to say how perceptive he was to know just by looking at me that I couldn't speak Pulaar, in Pulaar. He and his friends were soon laughing with me.

The next morning Adam took us to his villages rice fields. Beauty. The field is a long wide strip of knee deep water with a thick coat of bright green rice stalks on top, and it is surrounded by a landscape of grass, mango trees, and palm trees. I appologize for forgetting my camera. We tried to spot crocodiles, and eventually we leaned against a palm tree and enjoyed the birds's songs and the landscape of solid green, save the guy climbing trees to harvest palm wine. He uses an oval made of bamboo. He gets into the oval with the tree, each at an opposite end, and he uses the bamboo to support him as he leans back and shimmies up the tree.

Our second day of biking felt easier than the first. Our bodies were kind to us, learning that biking for hours was simply something we did, and not something to ache about. We talked about everything under the sun, played twenty questions, and told each stories and ideas we've had. Our road food became sandwiches. Every reasonably sized town on the road has a lady sitting under a shade structure selling bread, and if she didn't have the other ingredients that we wanted, we could buy them from a boutique or send a kid to do that for us. Alexis ate egg sandwiches and I had bread and margerine, and I added slices of cucumbers that I bought from passing kids. We drank kinkiliba, a local sweet tea. It is Ramadan, and many people are fasting, so instead of sitting with the vendor under the shade structure, we volunteered to hide, and would get ushered into a small tin-roofed room or a tent.

The road between Kolda and Velingara has a stunning collection of potholes, and most of them are gathered together between Adam's village and Koun Kane. Often they are so close together that only thin strips of pavement are left, like balance beams. The holes are routinely a foot deep, so biking straight and taking the bumps would be nearly impossible. Beside of the road the dirt has been pounded into a series of steep and tightly packed hills or waves, so that twisting and turning through the balance beams is the best option. A motorcyclist passed us, and I was comforted by how long it took him to get out of our sight. There is no getting good at handling these roads.

Everyone whom we passed called out cheerful greetings and asked where we were going. They looked at us like we were crazy when we told them how far we intended to go. Occasionally we caught up with another bicyclist, and he or she would chat with us about the quality of the road, the weather, and where we were all coming from.

Late in the afternoon two boys came barreling down the road so fast that they could not keep their feet on their bicycle pedals. One passed us, and the other swerved to our side of the street. Alexis dodged him, but he smashed into my front wheel, and once again I went flying onto the cement. This time I took the momentum of the fall and rolled once on the ground with it. When I stood up my left arm and knee hurt, but not nearly as bad as after my other accidents. A result of rolling? We were immediately surrounded by twenty little kids and a few adults who seemed to materialize out of thin air. The boy who hit me chuckled an appology, and his mother kept telling me, "it was a small, very small, silly little accident, yes?" as she grinned hopefully. When I told them I was fine they seemed deeply relieved. I wonder if they were afraid of me. After we had biked out of sight we stopped to examine my scrapes. Alexis gave me chocolate. We resumed our pedaling.

Our destination was Koun Kane, and where there is no sign on the east side of town. The sun had nearly set when we entered a town that had no name. Alexis called Kate, our host for the night, and reckoned we had another fifteen minutes at least. We got onto our bikes and took off as fast as we could, and about ten feet after our start we heard Kate and Evelina calling our names. They bought us sodas and were soon resting, deeply relieved. An old lady saw us exhausted, asked about our trip, and then merrily fanned us with her head scarf. After a short rest, the four of us rode out to Evelina's village. She lives about thirty minutes out of town on a dirt road. It's ordinarily a pleasant bike ride, with fields and forests everywhere you look. But we were biking after dark, a thunder storm was rolling in, and we only had two flashlights, so after a spell of slow biking we got off and walked, comically slipping and sliding on the mud, and arriving thoroughly drenched.

Evelina and Kate live in villages a kilometer apart. Volunteers debate the wisdom of such close assignments. It can be glorious when the volunteers are compatable and the villagers understanding, but it can be dreadful if the volunteers are not friends and the villagers do too much comparing of the two. Luckily, Kate and Evelina get along well, and talking about work and social situations has made things easier for both.

We spent the night in Kate's hut, and her village gave us one of the most delicious meals I have had in Senegal. Kate and the villagers are fasting, so the evening meal is a cause for rejoicing, and they did so this night by making a dish of beans to be eaten with bread and a peaunt sauce to be eaten with rice. It was too dark and we were too tired to do much besides eating dinner and falling into bed.

The next morning we biked to Kristal's village. Kristal has a unique location, almost 20km off a paved road. I think there was a time when many volunteers had settings like this, but nowadays most village volunteers are far closer to markets and easy transportation. I love her village. It is tiny, with maybe 200 people. She is the second or third volunteer to live here, so her villagers are fairly used to white people. I think because of the small population and the fact that everyone knows one another, there is a higher standard for behavior. The name calling and teasing that white people receive daily in cities does not happen in small villages.The villagers were so friendly and easy going. At one point Kristal's father called her outside specifically to tell her not to do any work today, just to sit with us, and not to let us do anything either, for we must rest after our long ride. After a long time catching up in her hut, walked to the field to see where she had planted trees, and then sat outside with her family. In training last year an older volunteer told us she felt like a pioneer woman from a century ago, traveling for a full day to visit friends, and then doing nothing but talking throughout the visit, and maybe a little knitting. Indeed. It was idyllic. This is what I pictured when I imagined Peace Corps.

We left Kristal's village at sunrise and biked out to the paved road. On the way we passed some men from Guinea-Bisau who were making coal and shoveling it into rice bags to take to market. Charcoal is probably the most common cooking implement, with wood and gas stoves coming in distant seconds. Shortly after Alexis and I began the final leg of our journey towards Velingara we decided to scrap it. Velingara held no alure for us besides it being the place to get a car back to Kolda. So we decided to forego bragging rights in favor of giving our bodies a break, and we started sticking out our thumbs. We were hoping for an air-conditioned NGO SUV, but the first car to stop for us was a beat up sept-place, or a station wagon, a common mode of travel. Ordinarily these cars are full, but this one happened to have two vacancies. The driver told us he was only going part way to Kolda, and initially I told him we did not want the ride, because getting dropped in a small town would force us into a small bus for the remainder of the journey. The small busses have the advantage of letting your hips and knees sit at right angles, but they look more rickety, and they lay tipped beside roads far more often than dosept-places. The chauffeur promised that if there were no other cars going to Kolda, he would make the trip, so we strapped our bikes to the roof and got in. There was no car in the small town bound for Kolda, but our chauffeur was as good as his word. It took four hours for the car to fill up. While we waited Alexis had an egg sandwich, and I had a potato spaghetti stirfry at a roadside table where a man was cooking over a gas stove. Then we lay on a bench and read. It was a slow and sweet end to our trip.

2007-10-27T04:23:00.000-07:00

July 29
I left the garden, started biking home, and saw a crowd in the distance walking my way. As I neared the group I realized it was made of three to four hundred boys and young men, and I guessed they were coming from a soccer match. When I reached the group the guys at the head parted to let me through, and one teenager squatted low, stretched out his arms towards me, and to the amusement of his friends, shouted, “toubahaako!” “Toubahaako,” literally means, “grass pants,” and it is used to taunt white people. I regularly hear other, less blatantly hostile names for white people, but "toubahaako," is infrequent, usually coming no more than once a day. After I passed this guy and his friends, I found myself deep in the crowd. I biked forward slowly, weaving around people.
A group of a dozen men my age was singing and dancing down the road. When they saw me they all migrated to my side of the road and formed a wall so that I had to stop my bike. All were shirtless, all had big shining muscles, and half of them waving machetes in the air. They made a tight circle around me and began chanting, “toubahaako.” The men behind me held onto my bicycle and my backpack, locking me in place. The men in front of me leered, shook their machetes at me, and ordered me to dance. I considered abandoning my bike and trying to escape, but I couldn’t see a way out of the circle, and beyond the circle were only more boys and men, none of whom seemed likely to take my side. Also, I was afraid that an undemanded sacrifice might be taken as encouragement. After receiving a few gentle machete taps on my bike helmet I did a quick ugly dance that was little more than a series of stomps. The circle opened and I was pushed on my way. I had to pedal slowly to make my way around the rest of the guys coming down the street. One boy stepped up to me and punched the air close to my face. I flinched hard, and those who saw burst into laughter. I had started trembling after the circle of men let me leave, and this near-punch set me to full shaking. It took a lot of concentration to keep steady on my bike.
When I got into market I went to a pair of women who I’ve been friendly with for months. I told them what had happened, expecting sympathy. Instead, they laughed. They told me that Konkoran season had begun and that henceforth if I see a group of males on the street I should run and hide. They assured me that I had not been in any real danger and that these boys only tease and threaten.
The Konkoran is a warrior monster who comes out during the rainy season, which is the male circumcision season. He patrols the town and protects young boys from witches. A man playing the Konkoran dresses in a well-crafted full body costume that looks like a giant long-haired brown Muppet. He lumbers around with a pack of at least twenty boys or young men, most of whom carry long branches, ostensibly for flogging purposes. The boys often chant as they go through town, and occasionally they travel with drummers. The Konkoran carries two machetes, and the clank of them being slapped together is enough to make females cringe and start looking for a place to hide. He was not with the crowd that I met on the road, so I guess the person wearing the costume had recently left.
The Konkoran and his minions are taken half seriously. Females of all ages squeal and run, but they then look on eagerly and might follow the Konkoran so that they will have to flee a second and third time. But genuine fear flashes on girls’ faces when they suddenly spot a Konkoran, and people have urged and even pulled me into compounds or shops to get me off the street when a Konkoran was coming. Women who have set up vegetable stands in the street often ignore the Konkoran. I’ve seen some Konkorans accept this. Others have gotten angry and brandished their machetes frighteningly close to women who refuse to play along.Little boys make Konkoran outfits by wrapping bags around themselves and cutting fringes. They are adorable and I’m more than happy to feign terror when I see a five year old toddling about in a plastic shag outfit.
Last year I largely enjoyed the Konkorans. They add an absurd Pacman element to the city; the paved roads and sandy paths are like a maze, and now we have the occasional monster forcing you to change your route. Sometimes multiple packs of boys roam Kolda at once, each with their own Konkoran. When each group has their own drum section it becomes possible to bike through town and never be out of earshot of at least one band of phenomenal drummers, one group growing closer and louder as the prior one fades to a quiet distant pounding. Toward the end of last year, tired of playing along whenever the Konkoran happened to appear, an okra vendor and I agreed not to run and hide. The Konkoran kicked and broke her chair, and one of his boys slapped me mildly on the back.
In retrospect, I think the women were right, and that I was not in any real danger. The Konkoran business is a game that the community agrees to play. It’s sexist and frustrating, and it goes on far too long in my opinion, and the fact that the city has only one bridge crossing its river often makes it difficult to find an alternative route. I wish it was a one-day affair. That said, I wish too that I could be a male for a week. I’d love to go out parading with the Konkoran.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4795629.stm - Has a picture of a konkoran. It's an odd shot of a resting konkoran, but it'll give you the idea. Picture him standing upright and waving the machettes.

2007-10-27T04:18:00.000-07:00

July 29
When I entered the demo garden where Alexis and I are working I was greeted by a sheep. I was horrified to see him in the garden, and assumed that all the vegetables had been eaten. Alexis’ host dad saw me open the gate for the garden and he followed me in after a moment. He laughed at the fear on my face, and told me it was his sheep. As he saw rage replace worry he quickly pointed out that the sheep was tied to a stake and was the new weeding staff. He works more slowly than kids, but he’s much happier to do it.
Walking further into the garden I was pleased to see that Musa, Alexis’s brother, had created two new small beds for the flower seeds I gave him. I really hope these seeds work. They are mixture of American seeds and a variety of flower seeds designed to work in tropical climates. So far I have had no success with doing flowers from seed. The packages all have heartbreakingly beautiful flowers that are beginning to look like unattainable magic. Maybe this batch will be different.
I spent the morning weeding beds, transplanting young tomatoes, breaking new ground, and planting flower cuttings taken from my garden. Yesterday afternoon I made a pesticide using red hot peppers, water, and laundry soap. I learned it is pretty foolish to submerge your hands in a bucket of water and tear up hot red peppers, and it's not to smart to use your hands to apply this concoction. Twelve hours after I started trying to rinse off my hand they are still burning. However, at least there are no visible bugs on the plants right now.

2007-10-27T04:10:00.000-07:00

Local kids like to discribe what toubobs are doing. When I am biking people will come up beside me and say, "The Toubob is biking!" Today I had a mango in my hand and heard, "Toubob is holding a mango." People have looked in on me working at the garden and told me, "The Toubob can dig," and occasionally, "The Toubob can't dig." My favorite of these commentaries came recently when Alexis's boyfriend, Al, was biking through town holding their half-grown puppy under one arm. Al was speeding to get out of the pouring rain, and the dog was bouncing up and down on his knees. As Alexis and Al hurried past, a kid called out, "The Toubob stole a dog!"

2007-10-27T04:00:00.000-07:00

Fatou was circumcised when she was twelve years old. She did not want to be cut. After she was forced into the hut where the old woman was waiting with her knife, Fatou held her knees together with all her strength. The other women could not pry her legs open, so a man was brought in, and he pulled her legs apart. The old woman nicked Fatou's cliteris, and Fatou bled a lot. Walking, sitting, and urinating, hurt for weeks afterwards.

A few years later, a man and woman came from Dakar to talk to school children about circumcision. Fatou was initially embarassed to speak about her experience, but the couple from Dakar were so open about their own genital cuttings, that Fatou was soon willing to share her story. The couple talked about the dangers of circumcisions, from the risks of a dirty knife to the potential of an especially invasive circumcisions causing a split to erupt between the anus and the vagina during childbirth. They spoke about Islam not requiring circumcision, and about it being an old cultural tradition designed to keep women from enjoying sex, and thus from being unfaithful to their husbands. They offered to speak to anyone's parents.

Fatou brought the couple home to her parents. By this time circumcision had been made illegal in Senegal. Fatou's mother talked with the pair for a few hours. She was interested, but not entirely convinced that she should break ties with the old practice. Fatou, however, was very emphatically against circumcision, and told her mother in no uncertain terms that if she had Fatou's younger sister circumcised, Fatou would call the police. After saving her sister from being circumcised, Fatou has gone on to talk to other people in the neighborhood. She is extremely open and blunt about her experience and her arguments against circumcision. She says all people her age who attend school are against circumcision because they have been educated about its dangers. Making circumcision illegal in itself has not made big enough strides towards ending the practice, but open dialogue about the risks involved is, I think, going to save much of the coming generation from being cut.

2007-08-04T12:04:00.000-07:00

Rain poured into my hut during the first storm last spring, soaking my bed and my books. To fix the leaky roof, my host mother had me buy plastic sheets and hire boys to fastened it to my straw roof as a hat. This greatly reduced the extent of the leaks, but by the end of the rainy season the plastic was torn to ribbons by the sun, wind, and rain. This often gave me a cool and wet bed, which was a nice antidote to the hot weather, but it was agreed that I needed my roof fixed before this year's rainy season.

My host mother first spoke of roof repairs last fall when I told her she had to stop coming into my hut to nap. She was very angry that I would not share my space, and she asked what would happen when my roof work was done. Would people not be allowed in my hut then too? At that time she told me the repairs would last between two and eight weeks, depending on how much I wished to pay the workmen.

When my Senegalese boss visited this March to check on my work and my home life, he discussed the roof with my mother and explained that because she owns and we are only renting, fixing the roof was her responsibility. He said Peace Corps would contribute a small sum to help with the bill. She was furious, but my boss was cheerful and completely unwilling to compromise. My mother said she did not have the cash to pay for the roof, so I paid a few months rent in advance.

Aliu, a roofer, was brought to the house, and my boss helped negotiate fees. Displeased with the final sum offered for labor, Aliu tried to make my boss feel small for not speaking Pulaar, the language my host family and I speak; Aliu bragged that if he said in Pulaar, "Come here so I can kill you," my boss would not know any better than to come. I have heard variations on this many times, usually as an explanation for why I should learn Wolof.

Aliu estimated the work would take four days, and my boss suggested I expect it to take a week. We should have realized it would take much longer. My current roof, though built only last year, was no good. It had sagged in around the edges, leaving plenty of places for water to collect and seep into my room. The roofers could not simply tie on more straw. They had to replace the entire roof.

Work began two days after the negotiations. I had no idea they were starting so soon. When I got home that day my roof was stripped of its straw and the wire that had held the straw in place, and so much had fallen into my hut that I could not see the floor. My clothing and bed were coated in straw, wire, and cement that had chipped off my walls. I cleared most of the debris off my bed, but tiny shards of straw stabbed me for many nights.

After taking down my old roof, Aliu and his assistant rebuilt, took down, rebuilt, took down, and rebuilt the frame of my roof. The first rebuilt frame was held in place by metal wire loosely tied into holes chipped in my walls. It looked as though it would slide off with the first wind. The second rebuilt frame was deemed to be too flat, a small hill where I needed a steep mountain, so water would have fallen into my hut rather than running off. I miss the world of blueprints. Constructing a frame took the workers a full day, as did deconstructing a frame, so it quickly became apparent that the four to seven day estimate was shot.

In addition to the problem of figuring out just what a roof should look like, there was trouble with getting Aliu out of bed. The first time Aliu did not show up when scheduled to work, my mother and I waited two hours before going to his house. (She was not surprised by his absence. She had given him money the day before, and she expected him to try to avoid work until he spent that money. My boss and my neighbors agreed that this is standard policy for laborers around here.) We woke him. He grinned and told us the sun was hot. He told us he was an old man. He told us he worked yesterday. He finally agreed to come to work at 3 o'clock. At 3:30 I went to his house and woke him. Fetching Aliu, and being teased by his family about being his wife and coming to take him to my bed, became my daily chore.

The workers discovered they were short on wooden beams while building the second of the three frames, and they told my mother that she had to buy two more long beams of wood. These are expensive. Although earlier in the day my mom spoke of Peace Corps's contribution covering Aliu's labor costs, she now swore it was to cover lumber, and that because it was not enough, Peace Corps or I must pay for the new beams if work was to contiue. I argued a bit, but she has tried to coerce money out of me many times before, and I am learning her style. When she started yelling I acted amused that she'd lost her temper and told her to calm herself. The crowd around us laughed. Finally, at her suggestion, I called my boss to have him settle matters. It is the first time I called her bluff. I should have done this ages ago. She said little on the phone, and when my boss was through talking to her she wordlessly shoved my phone at me. An hour later she came into my hut and snarled that I had misunderstood, and that she only wanted me to advance her another month's rent.

When Aliu came to work I tried talking to him about himself, his family, local matters, food, my life, the weather, and other topics, but teasing was his favorite mode of communication with me. When he wanted my attention he would call me, "My Wife," and he told strangers I loved him. He told me daily that as soon as the roof was finished he would sleep with me in my bed. This is such a common example of local humor that I was surprised when my American mother was alarmed by this promise of sex.

Aliu's boss, Sisico, occasionally came by to supervise and help with the work. Shortly after my third and final roof frame was constructed, one of Sisico's children in Dakar died. Naturally, Sisisco did not come to work for the next week. Aliu decided to take this time off too. My mom sent me to his house to inform him that if he did not resume work immediately she would find a new laborer. He finally promised to get out of bed and come to my house. I went home and reported to my mother. We waited, but he never came. My mom yelled at everyone about Aliu being a lazy and lousy worker. The refrain to her diatribe was,"I talked to him until I was tired." Despite her threats, the next morning Aliu and his assistant were tying chunks of straw together for my roof. They were sitting in the shade of a mango tree, drinking tea with the men who usually sit there, and occasionally tending to the straw. I walked over to see what they were up to, and Aliu jokingly invited me to help. I surprised him by accepting his offer. Soon a crowd assembled to watch the toubob tie straw. Once I got the rhythm of it I was able to go fast, and the men sitting by the tree all agreed that I did it better than Aliu. He was nonplussed by this, and he began to work faster than I had ever seen him move before.

To tie straw you must put two stakes in the ground and string wire or rope between them close to the ground. Next, lay the straw flat on the wire. To tie the straw to the wire, use wire, rope, or long wet strips of leaf to knot small bunch after small bunch of straw on the base wire. Be sure to pull the bunches close together.

In all, the work stretched over a full month. No work was ever done on Thursdays, because a roof constructed on a Thursday will surely burn. Seck, my Senegalese counterpart who runs the garden where I work, was very supportive about my not coming to work during this period. He is extremely suspicious of Senegalese people, and he encouraged me to be at home any time workers needed to be in my hut.

The first rainstorm came two months after my roof was completed. It poured outside, and so much rain fell into my bedroom that I had to pull my bed into my livingroom. The next day I bought plastic, like the plastic that used to cover my roof, and now I throw it over my things whenever I leave my hut.

THE PICs:
Aliu is sitting on top of my hut's wall.
The mason added two layers of bricks to my hut so that after I move out my mom can put in a ceiling. This will trap the heat between the ceiling and the roof and make the hut cooler. With the mason's help and my mom's approval I chipped out a rectangle of wall by the entrance of my hut and cemented in a mezuzah.
The second frame was very labor intensive. You can see they got very far along on it before it was deemed unfit. After putting in a few more rings they could have attached the straw and been done. I was so sad to see this frame come down.
The third frame, the one I now have above my hut, is pretty unique. I think it's the choice for larger huts because it is unlikely to sag.

2007-07-27T12:48:00.000-07:00

My friend Nick had an eleven hour car ride with a man who was putting together an international music festival in a town 140 km from Kolda. The man revealed that his white act, a few Spanish men, had cancelled, and he was looking for a new white ensemble. Nick contacted me and asked if Charlie and I might want to play two sets at the show the following week. I was really excited to do this, so after I left the garden I hurried to Charlie's house on my bike. On the way I smashed into something. Lets call it a turkey. The animal ran off, and I flew off my bike onto the cement where I skid to a stop on my left arm. A day later I was able to make a fist again, but pain remained. Between my aching arm and the short notice on the concert, Charlie and I decided not to perform. However, we got talking about doing music together, he talked to a friend of his who arranges parties, and in September, Charlie, a few other volunteers, and I will put on a show of classic rock songs at a local hotel.

A few weeks after my fall I went up to Dakar for x-rays. Nothing was broken, so med sent me to physical therapy. I spent the next two weeks in a type of heaven. Every two days I went to physical therapy and had infared, ultrasound, massage, electric volts, and other things done on my arm by a really nice woman who was more than happy to explain what she was doing. The rest of the time I was basically on vacation. I walked for hours and hours every day, exploring Dakar and gazing at the ocean. I ate delicacies like ice cream and falafel. I went to a small island with another volunteer and held a sea urchin in my hand. Coincidentally, that night I saw photos of some friends of mine eating live sea urchins. I bought a gremlin mask and leapt at children in the street. Random volunteers came to Dakar for med reasons or to fly off on vacation, so I got to see friends I had not seen in months. The American Club allows us to enter for free, so I went to the pool a few times and participated in a trivia night. The volunteer based in Dakar took me and two others to the zoo. It's a depressing place of tiny cages and cement floors, but it has the advantage of letting you get very close to the animals. A tiger nearly bit one of my friends. The animals kept in by chain link fences have done a lot of goring the fences, so we were able to partially enter their cages. It looks like Dakar is going to have some escaped camels and elk soon. We were bewildered by the herd of donkeys fenced off to the side until someone realized this was the zoo's pantry. Later at feeding time we saw the lions munching on rib cages that looked donkey-sized. In the heart of Dakar I discovered a cat-lady. She looked exactly like the homeless cat-ladies of NYC. I sat on the sidewalk chatting her and petting her feline entourage for a long time. Most of all, I just walked. I raised, popped, and grew calluses over blisters. It was glorious to have miles and miles of pavement and to have no one recognize me.

My arm is mostly better now. It's stiff some mornings, but it doesn't hinder my work much, and it doesn't hurt when I play violin.

pics of the zoo, curtesy of Justin Land:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?Uc=7cwno9h.945uc0il&Uy=ksk5ys&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=0&mode=fromshare&conn_speed=1

2007-07-26T12:48:00.000-07:00

Alexis, her boyfriend Al, who is visiting for the summer, and I have been creating a new demo-garden in Kolda. Alexis's host father owns the land. It is completely fenced in, and it is very close to Alexis's house, making it ideal. Jenny and I worked this land last winter, but the children in her compound were supposed to water, and they didn't do it often enough. Jenny was by then in the process of leaving the country, and it was the dry season, so we decided to put the garden on hold until Alexis took over the site.

It has been so much fun transforming the empty lot into a garden. Aside from the natural work of digging beds and turning soil, we have had to do a lot of hunting for supplies. We made three trips to the field where I get cow paddies and biked back to the garden with sacks of it on our bikes. Alexis and Al were initially squeemish about touching the cow fecies, but after the first day they threw away their gloves and dug in like champions. Peace Corps recommends lining beds with plastic to hold water and discourage burrowing animals. Plastic can be expensive, so we decided to try the process using rice sacks. Boutiques occasionally sell the sacks, but they will rarely have more than one avaialable at a time. We solved this problem by going through garbage heaps and jumping down into sewers to find the sacks. Alexis made contact with a peanut seller who now sells us her peanut shells, which are great for the nursery stage of seeds. We wanted mulch and were considering going to carpenters and asking for their shavings, but then we noticed the sudden abundance of straw piles beside houses. The rainy season had just begun, and many people were fixing their roofs. We got permission from a nearby hut-owner and then carried his pile to the garden. We had asked the kids in Alexis's compound to help us, and soon about twenty more kids joined us. The mob of kids and we three toubobs walked in a loop from the pile to the garden and back, in one direction hugging to our chests as much straw as we each could carry, and in the other directin covered in dirt and straw specks. Al got the idea of making the garden look nicer by lining the beds with red stones and creating a path to the well, so he led children in hunting for rocks in the land near the garden. A local organization that grows trees in sacks gave us Nebedie trees and a Neem tree. The Nebedie are small now, but they seem to grow visibly every day, and within a few months they should be able to be the foundation for a new fence at the garden to replace the current one that is crumbling behind them. The kids from Alexis' compound and some neighboring children come to the children to work with us almost every day.

Back when Jenny and I were working in the garden I purchased four meters of chicken wire, and we made three cylinders for compost, as recommended by Peace Corps. Shortly afterwards, the garden went on hold, so it wasn't until much later that Alexis and I began using these compost bins. The idea behind them is that they are very well aerated and they are insulated from grazing animals. You should keep the compost in the first container for three weeks before moving it to the next. In that process you turn it. Fill the first container again, and at three weeks move the compost from the second container to the third, and the first to the second. In another three weeks the third container should have lovely usable compost. In training we saw how quickly the decomposing process worked in these conditions. We were only at training for a few weeks after we started using these containers, so I don't know what happened to them later. In our garden, the old vegetables and branches did start to decompose nicely, but as the material moved the chicken wire bent around it. Soon our nice cylinders were crumpled into balls around the compost. Trying to extract the muck from one crumpled meter of chicken wire and put it in another was a headache. Alexis came up with the idea of using rice sacks instead. Chicken wire is expensive, so even had it worked beautifully, it could only have encouraged locals on the principle of composting; they would have had to do it by another method.

Yesterday we set up Alexis's composting idea. We cut three sacks so they were open at top and bottom, and then we hemmed both ends to prevent fraying. We went hunting through town until we found old bamboo poles, and we cut twelve of them to shoulder hight. We sewed four to each sack so they could work as support for the form and as legs, and we hammered the ends of the poles into the ground, creating three square containers. Then came the unpleasant part. By now we had matter composting in the three chicken wire balls, and we had to move them to our new containers. Everything had turned to a brown slimy mush, with only the occasional recognizable bit of mango or onion. We found a few avocado pits that were alive, and we planted them in the garden. Our shovel is in pretty bad shape, so we soon resigned ourselves to moving the mass handful by handful.

It is a pleasure to have a garden where we can do as we wish. I have gotten so frustrated with Seck disagreeing with or sabotaging my projects at our garden. At Alexis's garden we can plant trees, vegetables, herbs, and flowers, doexperiments with container planting, composting, manure, etcetera, and teach visitors however we like. Alexis has already given a lesson to adults on bean planting and the kids working there are learning as they go.

This evening I went to the garden after working at Seck's and planted flowers between the Nebedie trees until the sun set.

2007-07-26T12:46:00.000-07:00

Kids here do not have many formal toys beyond balls and marbles, so they make do with what they find. A round piece of metal from the center of an old bicycle tire can be amusing for hours. I often see kids playing with a long stick. They push it in the ground or dangle things from it.

Today I saw some boys playing a new game. Sitting in our sand road, they made a foot-high mound of the sand. They buried a handful of low coins in the sand, and then they took turns slamming a rock down onto the mound. Any coins visible after one kid's turn belonged to him. Another game involves digging golf-sized holes in the ground and taking turns trying to toss a stone or a marble into the hole. It's surprisingly difficult.

Instead of the game of jacks I grew up with, girls will assemble a pile of small rocks and one bigger one. Toss the big one in the air and grab one pebble before catching the rock. Then repeat, trying to get two.

2007-06-26T06:53:00.000-07:00

I finally danced with the Baye Falls! They are a religious sect, and they are hated because publically they do nothing but hastle people for money, wail songs, bang drums, and smoke pot. In Kolda the visible members are all males in their early twenties. People here claim to hate them, and when I first hung out with the Baye Falls months ago my family heard about it before I got home, and everyone took turns yelling at me, promising the guys would slit my throat, rob me, rape me, kill me, and sell me into slavery.
The Baye Falls come to Kolda from Dakar. When they are in Kolda they camp at a house just across the path from my compound. It used to drive me crazy. I would hear them drumming and singing late into the night, and I would imagine how much fun it would be to join them. Up until recently I was too afraid of public opinion to cross into their yard. Finally last week, summoned out by the firey drumming, I walked close enough to see through the huts to the Baye Falls. Instead of finding men engaged in colorful debauchery as promised by my family, I saw little girls dancng. While I was craning to see the girls, a friend of mine walked past. Seeing me, she told me she was heading to the Baye Falls. I ran back to lock my hut, and we walked to the music together. I was shocked to realize I knew most of the people there. I am discovering how anti-social my family is.
The older women and young girls were all dressed up in brightly colored fancy fabrics and loose scarves that flowed around them. The younger ones were dancing. Simple motions - spinning slowly, snapping fingers in the air. The older women were lounging on a plastic mat where they were playing with one another's hair and drinking coffee brought to them by the Baye Falls. They looked so pretty and leisurely that they made me think of genies lazing about in their lamps or fairies relaxing in their garden.
Girls who recognized me instantly pulled me into the dancing and showed me how to move my arms in their snapping dance. I squated to dance with Halimatou, a four year old girl who I think has Downs Syndrome. We twirled together and chased each other, taking turns pretending to be a monster, and the women on the mat rolled with laughter. The Baye Fall men stood nearby in a circle beside the two drummers. The men were bursting with energy. They swayed and hopped in place while chanting, singing, and even screaming their song about Allah.
When the girls saw that I kept looking at the men they pushed me towards them. I was afraid of how a female, let alone a white one, would be received, so I pulled Mama, one of the little girls, along with me. The men reacted to our entry only by making a bit of space for us in their circle. I didn't recognize the words of the song, so I belted out words of gibberish instead. Sometimes we sang all together, sometimes in call and response. We all sang or hollered with our heads thrown back and our eyes on the sky. At one point Halimatou's mother found Halimatou wandering between the Baye Fall's legs, and she brought her to me and told her to stay by me. I was honored to be chosen as a trusted person from all these people who Halimatou's mother has known much of her life.
Kumba, a six year old girl who has screamed and cried at the sight of me ever since I came here, finally overcame her fears. She began by dancing near me, and soon was holding my hand. When I left the men to sit with the women she sat on me and got her kicks running her fingers over my arms and legs, fascinated by my whiteness. The women on the mat teased me about becoming a Baye Fall, but it was with a kindness and affection. Dancing and singing out was invigorating, and sitting with the women, chatting in Pulaar, feeling embraced by their smiles and quite literally by many of their children, was heart warming.
The second time I danced with the Baye Falls many more people were there. Instead of ten men, there were about twenty, and the singing and dancing was even more energetic than the first time. One Baye Fall was in a wheel chair, and he bounced and rocked the chair so vigourously as he sang that I thought he'd knock it over. Like the first time, I danced with the women and then brought a few girls over to dance and sing with the men. This time we marched in a small circle around the drummers. A moment after I started marching, one of the men said something to the young girl nearest me, and she ran off, returning a moment later with a sheer silky scarf. She tied it over my head; all the females in attendance had thier heads similarly covered.
A few of the men were drunk. One tried to embrace me, and for an instant I did not recognize the smell and just thought he was sick. I love the fact that Senegal is a Muslim country, and the instances of roudy drunk men are few and far between.
Shortly after the drunk man grabbed me, another man grabbed my wrist. I jerked back, but he smiled soborly at me, and Mama pushed me to go with him. I clamped my hand onto her wrist, and she led me after him into a dark room. Here I discovered why this night was so much more festive than the first: the Baye Fall's religious leader was visiting. He was sitting in the small, dark, cement room with an electric fan pointed right at him and a man in the corner behind him beating himself with a club. We were not aloud to simply walk into the room, but had to get down on all fours like cats. The leader grasped my hand and spoke to my guide in French, and he translated to Pulaar. The leader told me how happy he was to see me here, and how much he would like to educate me about the Baye Falls. While he was speaking two more men entered the room. They were crawling with their bodies almost flat to the floor. The leader asked my name and, still holding my hand, stared at me silently with grave intent. When he spoke again it was to ask if I had a husband and whether he could get my number. It sounded so much like a punch line that I had to stiffle a laugh. He let me go after I appologetically told him that I am married and have no phone.
After my visit with the leader, everyone in the compound looked at me with admiration and envy. I returned to the circle and we danced and wailed our songs to the sky late into the night.

2007-06-26T06:50:00.000-07:00

Six months ago I met Musan Diouf and then promptly forgot her name. The next time I saw her she gave me grief for not knowing her name, so I made up a short tune and was singing both her name and her son's as I walked away. I didn't see her again until this week. I would not have recognized her face, but when she sang, "Musan Diouf, Badu Dialo," at me, I peddled back to greet her. She said she's called out my name a few times in the past but gotten only a vague wave. So many people call my name as I bike through town that if I do not know the person well I just wave and bike on.
Musan was coming from a wedding party. Still very much in a festive mood, she danced in the path as we spoke. I joined in and she laughed at my pitiful attempts at the local moves. She tried to reassure me, promising I have potential. She told me that if I came back to her house the next day she would teach me the Sabar, the dance performed at weddings and baptisms. I have seen this dance many times. It is done while a man or men drum, and it looks like arms and legs being thrown out to all sides at once in a complex rhythm.
When I showed up the next day Musan had a few friends over, and all were eager to see me dance but shy about dancing themselves. Finally a man, Mose, came by, and they all swore he was the best dancer. I thought they were joking with him, but he agreed to teach me. Musan's compound has a cement platform that is raised two steps off the ground, and this stage-like structure was where Mose decided to have the lesson. Before we even started, an audience of ten little kids had gathered.
He began by having some of the girls sing and clap a simple tune. He danced beside or in front of me, and I tried to copy his moves. I kept getting tripped up. I have a tough time watching his feet and communicating the motions to my own, and I also got confused trying to guess which head and arm moves were specific and deliberate, and which were just arbitrary swings. Mose does not speak Pulaar, so the lesson was given via charades and rudimentary sounds of approval and dismay. Mose finally found a series of moves that I could copy, and he wove them into a routine. I got roaring cheers when I finally did the routine start to finish. I was able to see myself on Issatou's video-cell phone, flailing like a muppet with a huge smile on my face.
At first, folks in the compound watched and alternatively laughed and cheered, but eventually the lesson faded into a background event. When the audience went away, Musan and her friends felt more at ease, and the lesson changed into a bit of a dance competition for them, and a phenominal dance show for me.
I've been back a few more times for lesson. I like how informal it is. I show up, Mose and I go to the cement platform, a few girls make music, and he teaches me moves until the evening soap opera comes on tv.

2007-06-04T12:39:00.000-07:00

I was in a cyber cafe in Kolda near the center of town when April 14's riot began. Loud jarring sounds kept coming from the area near the police station, and eventually the woman running the cafe said she was closing; she wanted to go home. She lives in my neighborhood, so we left together. We went out to the street and stood beside the road. From there we could see a fire raging at the nearest intersection. Fist sized rocks coming from a crowd of teenaged boys were arching over the fire. We needed to cross the river to get home, and rocks were landing very close to the only bridge, so the woman and I just stayed with the crowd that was watching the spectacle.
After a few minutes of rock throwing, the boys suddenly turned as one and ran west. A moment later we saw a car full of policemen coming from the east. After the boys returned to their rock throwing and yelling, two truckloads of soldiers appeared. They poured off the trucks and into the streets, and the boys made themselves scarce. The woman from the cafe and I took side streets as much as possible on our way home. When we walked on the street where the rocks were thrown I got my first big jolt of fear. The rocks looked enormous up close, and there were so many.
Piecing together rumors: On April 13th a teenaged boy was arrested in Kolda. He was accused of stealing from the house of a city official. He was kept in jail over night, and when his mother went to see him in the morning he was brought out on a stretcher, dead. Word quickly spread around town that the police, who have a history of brutality, had beat him to death.
Police and soldiers got the rioting under control, but not until many fires had been set in the roads down town, street signs had been torn out of the ground, and the house the boy was accused of robbing was burned down.
A couple days later, I left Kolda to go to Thies to help train the new volunteers. Aside from the 18h trip there, it was a wonderful week, much like a vacation. I helped teach courses on composting, micro-gardening, and traditional Pulaar weddings. While the new volunteers were in language classes I got to lounge and catch up with other friends who were in town for training. It was odd to see people exactly where I was one year ago, and to remember how strangely relaxed and happy the older volunteers struck me a year back, and how it then seemed inconceivable then that I would ever actually reach this point.
Alexis, the new volunteer in the city of Kolda, and I came back home on Saturday the 21. When we got into town we immediately noticed that most people were covering their mouths with fabric. We asked a few kids, and they explained that they did not want to inhale the gas that the police had sprayed, and they pointed up the street where twenty huge men were milling about. All wore huge shiny helmets and had hard plastic armor covering their bodies. I could see from a distance that they carried metal ringed billy-clubs and big guns. We asked about the gas, if it made people cry or if it hurt people's lungs, and the kids told us simply that it made people fall down.
The police were so heavily armed and looked so much like toy soldiers that it was too much to resist. Alexis took out her camera and I pretended to pose while she shot pictures of the men. We began to walk home, but when we turned east we had a view of the men shining in the setting sun. Idiot that I am, I urged Alexis to snap another picture. That was when the police saw us.
Three muscular giants wearing riot gear and stunningly mean expressions ran at us. They screamed about not taking photos and made a few menacing gestures with their hands. Thankfully, they understood the concept of a digital camera, and rather than demanding film, they yelled at us to erase the pictures. We very quickly, and probably permanently, learned the French word for, "erase." Alexis erased, and one of the towering policemen grabbed her camera and scrolled through the pictures to make sure she had been thorough. A bit more with the hollering and hand waving for good measure, and finally the men let us walk away.
Shaking ever so slightly, we went scrounging among the few merchants who had not closed their shops, trying to find dinner fixings. Everyone looked tense, and we saw a fist fight break out. While we were pondering whether to get mangos we heard what sounded like gunshots. In a beat we agreed we weren not in the mood for mangos and took off to find a taxi. People who were standing around laughed at our response to the noise.
Our taxi driver explained that the funeral for the teen who had died last week was held this morning, and the funeral procession had dissolved into this day's riot.

2007-06-04T12:30:00.000-07:00

Boye is a tall muscular twenty-five year old man. He has a baby face and speaks slowly, making him seem like a gentle and simple kid in a mismatched body.
He approached me in town back in November, and after preliminary greetings, he told me he wanted to learn English. I gave him my standard answer, that if he came by my house we could start holding lessons. Many people ask to study English, but Boye surprised me; he is the only one who ever showed up in my compound.
We held class twice a week for a month. Between lessons he would write me text messages saying he missed me and sending me big kisses. He seemed bewildered when I repeatedly asked him to treat me like a teacher and not a girlfriend.
He was a good student. He studied his vocabulary well, and we were able to have simple conversations in English, filling in with Pulaar when he was ,missing a word. During a class about names for relatives, we discussed his father's wives and the dating system here. I told him I find the common method, of a boy telling a girl he just me that he loves her and wants her to be his girlfriend, a bit abrupt. He agreed, and told me he prefers a slower style. He related for me how after our first conversation, which I don't remember, he racked his brain for how to get to spend more time with me, and thus came up with the idea of asking for English lessons. I had had no idea the lessons' inspiration. After we filled a page of his notebook with vocabulary, I told him I'd be busy for a spell, but would call him when I had time again.
After a few weeks he started dropping by my house. He had little to say, and I did not want to encourage him, so after basic greetings we spent a lot of time quiet. He came over one time while I was gardening, and he helped me with the digging. He told me his mother gardens, and the next day we met and he took me to see his mother's vegetables. She and I spent the afternoon chatting. For the next few months Boye called me often, telling me his family greeted me and wished I would visit again. I tried once, but I got lost.
His calls and visits tapered off with time, so I was surprised to see him at my house last night. We did the usual routine of greeting and then staring off until he got up to leave. As is custom, I offered to walk him down the road. As soon as we got out of my compound and out of my family's earshot, he told me the purpose of his visit.
He had been thinking, and because he has no wife, I have no husband, and we have spent so much time talking, he figured we should get married. He spoke in such a calm and cheerful manner that had I not understood his words I would have thought he was commenting fondly on the nice weather. Even understanding his words I had to ask him to repeat himself just so I could be sure. The second time around he added that he loved me and wanted me. This is a step up from the proposal I received from a religious man who spoke English, in which his two main arguments in favor or a wedding were, "I am a diamond in the road and you should pick me up before someone else does," and "I've never fucked." For less serious proposals I say things about already having some husbands or about my marriage fee being very high, but I wanted to give a reply that left no room for debate, and said simply, "I don't want you." Boye proposed a few more times before my refrain sunk in, and finally he left.
When I told my family about Boye, instead of laughing at the absurdity of a man I barely know, and with whom I can't manage more than five minutes conversation, thinking we could be a happily married pair, they responded thoughtfully, "But he might really love you." I miss people from my culture.

2007-04-14T03:57:00.000-07:00

Today I saw my sister cutting small circles out of a scrap of gourd, poking holes in the circles, and stringing them onto a seashell necklace for her baby. She explained:

When a woman has more than one son, as many of these sons as possible are circumcised at the same time. In this business eldest sons are to be pitied, for their circumcisions are decidedly more painful and memorable those of their younger brothers.

After boys have recovered from their circumcisions and are able to walk and dance again without pain, their families through parties. When two or more boys from the same mother are circumcised, a gourd bowl the size of two human heads is brought to the party. During the festivities those brothers will grab corners of the bowl and pull until the bowl breaks. Women in attendance instantly dive to the ground to try to grab pieces to wear for good luck.

*

After discussing male circumcision, we got onto female circumcisions. It is now illegal to perform circumcisions on girls in Senegal. A very old woman who lives across the road was imprisoned a few months ago. She was the neighborhood circumciser for many many years, and despite the law there remain many parents, including some women whom she had circumcised when they were young, who want to have their daughters circumcised. Someone informed the police that she was still cutting little girls, and the old woman was arrested. Many members of the community went to the jail and begged for her release. She was freed, and she died not long afterwards. My sister, who was circumcised by this woman, blames her death on her time in jail and the theft of her role and status in our society. There is now no one in our neighborhood qualified to perform female circumcision, but my family knows a woman in the next quartier.

There are a variety of cuts that can be called circumcisions. My sister told me that when she was about eight years old she was cut and the blood dripped down to cause her vagina to mostly close. I'm not clear on preciscely where she was cut, but another volunteer told me that circumcision around here often involves sewing the vagina shut, leaving just enough space for menstral blood to exit. Shortly before her marriage my sister went back to the old woman who had circumcised her, and this woman cut her open. She told me that the first few times she had sex it was very painful, but sex has since become "a little" pleasurable.

She told me they perform circumcisions for a variety of reasons. It dates back in local tradition to long before Islam was introduced. She said people here debate about whether Islam says circumcision is necessary. Circumcisions, especially of her kind, ensure purity until marriage, and she said that sometimes families will flaunt a bloody sheet after a wedding night. She told me that non-circumcised vaginas can smell bad. Although city girls are likely to be allowed to choose a spouse, village girls are often given arranged marriages. It is easier for the parents to make a good match if the girl is circumcised. Also, I suspect there is the argument some American men have for circumcising their sons, of simply wanting their offspring to look like them.

There used to be classes on womanhood and a celebration to go along with being circumcised, so that it was a formal and joyful introduction to the community, but since it has become illegal, girls are being circumcised in secret as babies. Despite the pain of the procedure, the premarital cutting, sex, and childbirth, my sister is considering having her daughter circumcised. She only hinted at this. I think she was a bit concerned that I will report her to the police.

2007-04-14T03:43:00.000-07:00

People like to tell me what they think of my Pulaar. Sometimes they are blunt about it not being great, other times they are very encouraging about the progress I've made. My most emphatic support for my Pulaar comes not when I use new vocabulary or have an in depth conversation, but when I make people laugh.

I was walking in the market a few months ago and heard a man hissing at me. Men often hiss to get attention. (I heard about a Peace Corps volunteer being thrown out of a restaurant in Europe for absorbing this habit and thoughtlessly using it to get a waitress's attention.) I did not turn my head to look at the man. The woman walking beside, whom I'd never met, told me that the man wanted my attention. I told her that were he a friend of mine he would call my name, and that his hissing showed he was just a flirt. She said, "You speak the truth," and we parted ways. A woman who had overheard this said to me with delight, "You can really speak Pulaar!"

When a roofer came to my house to talk about prices we had a long while to sit and chat before negotiations began. We talked about a variety of things, and he seemed impressed but not stunned by my Pulaar. As it always does, the conversation arrived at whether I will take him to America, and if I will not take him, what kind of gift I will give him. He told me I should give him a car. I said fine, but that he must give me a gift too. He asked what I wanted, and I said, "An airplane." He burst out laughing and told me I really speak Pulaar. He repeated this exchange to my host mom, and I have heard her repeating it twice.

When I interact random people on the street or talk to vendors, if one of the people is a man I will receive a marriage proposal. If I decline the invitation, saying the man is ugly, stupid, smelly, too wimpy to satisfy me in bed, or something else insulting, I win big laughs and will usually hear someone say approvingly, "she can really speak Pulaar!"

Last night my host sister said she thinks I don' t like wearing Senegalese outfits. She's right. The tops are too baggy and hot, and the wrap around skirts require too much thought. There are specific rules on how to tie them, including that they must always open to the left, and I am no good at tying them securely in such a way that neither limits my stride nor flashes views of my upper thigh. My sister said she could not understand why I don't like the outfits, arguing that she has seen other white people choosing to wear Senegalese garments. I have heard this before in terms of having my hair braided, piercing my ears, having multiple boyfriends, eating meat, drinking local water, and everything else I do not like to do that someone has at some point seen another volunteer or American do. I asked Khadja, the girl sitting next to my sister whether she likes cucumbers. She does. My sister does not, so I proceeded to tell my sister that it made no sense for her to not like cucumbers in light of the fact that other Senegalese people enjoy them. She laughed told me that because I can speak Pulaar so well now I am welcome to wear whatever I like.

2007-04-09T06:07:00.000-07:00

A good friend of mine in the US has breast cancer. She found the lump herself, and because of early detection the cancer will be much more easily and affectively treated than if it had been found later. Do self breast exams!

I wanted to do something to help, so I went to Jimmy Hendrix, my bamboo furniture maker. He once shut his shop and took me into the bush to find cow patties for my garden, and he has been a wealth of information on where to find things within town. I asked Jimmy if he knew where I might have lekki made. Lekki, also known as gris-gris, means medicine, but in this case is more like a good luck charm. All babies wear lekki around their waists, and many adults wear it tied tight on their upper arms. It is usually either a black rope or a rope of coiled leather with a triangle of leather hanging off, inside of which is a page with a blessing written on it.

Jimmy shut his shop and took me walking a few blocks to Bodgy's house. Bodgy is a wrinkled, hunched old man with a rough voice. He received us in his bedroom which is strewn with candles, plates of puddles of wax from old candles, piles of paper with Arabic writings, scraps of leather, and a few bunches of mint leaves. Jimmy told Bodgy what I wanted. Bodgy looked at me, confused, and said, "But they have really good medicine in the US." I was afraid he would be offended when I told him I wanted it to be more of a souvenir, or perhaps as a suppliment to her other medicines. But he seemed pleased that I wanted to send to the US a piece of what I'm seeing in Senegal.

Bodgy asked a lot about my friend's symptoms, and then, after a moment's consideration, told me that tomorrow, Thursday, would be a good day to write the lekki. As Jimmy and I were getting up to leave, Bodgy told us that because Jimmy (known to locals as Usmaan) said that I am a very good friend of his, he would not demand the "toubob price," but would instead let me name my price. I will always be a toubob, but in little ways I am treated like a local, non-tourist, toubob.

I returned the next day by myself and had to wait outside for about twenty minutes while Bodgy finished lekki for a young man. When it was my turn Bodgy and I sat on his floor and a child brought us tea. After we finished drinking and the child had returned for the cups, Bodgy took out a fresh sheet of paper and very slowly wrote about five lines of Arabic. Below this he made a grid with nine squares in it, and he filled this with Arabic writing and some marks that looked like musical notation. Before filling in the middle square he asked for my friend's name. Once the writing was completed, Bodgy carefully rubbed the page over and under a few other sheets that were covered in Arabic. Next, he folded the page into a series of triangles until it was a small, tight triangle that could not be bent any further. He blew on it or whispered to it and then, very tenderly, passed it to me.

After lekki is written, it must be wrapped in leather. (I never expected to be seeking out a leatherworker, just as I never pictured myself harvesting cow bones.) I have seen leather workers in town. They have very casual set-ups, often nothing more than a bench surrounded by bits of leatherr. I was walking into town to find one of these men when I caught up with Mya, a woman from my neighborhood. She was also going to have lekki wrapped, so she brought me to her guy. He works out of the front of a half built brick house. I guess the owners ran out of money before completing it. I sat with his other clients on an old wooden board that is balanced across a few large rocks, hidden from the street and the sun by a patchwork curtain nailed into the bricks. The setup looks so rough that in passing I had assumed a homeless person's sleeping place.

I watched the leatherworker finish a waist band with lekki on it, and then I gave him my triangle, which he handled as if it was a precious ruby. He stretched and wound leather around the paper, attached it to a black rope, and created a clasp. His motions were slow and careful, and he unwound and rewrapped long sections of leather before he was satisfied. I wore the lekki out of his shop and for the rest of the day, and a lot of people on the street gave me nods or even shouts of approval for my distinctly African armband.

2007-03-16T04:53:00.000-07:00

February 6

Abdoulaye Wade came to Kolda today. He is Senegal's current president and, in Kolda at least, far and away the most popular of the fifteen presidential candidates. Many streets surrounding the tent where he would be speaking were blocked to cars and for hours ahead of time were covered with people wearing Wade shirts, coming from near and far to show their support.

Although I do not understand French well enough to want to hear a speach in French, I was curious about what the political rally would be like, so I came early and found myself a shady spot a bit up hill from where Wade would be speaking. At first everything was friendly and festive. A little girl placed herself beside me as a guide and told me what we were seeing. People wearing the purple shirts are from this school. Those drummers are from that neighborhood, while that set of drummers is from such other neighborhood. The man dressed in fringed costume and face paint is representing some character. That huge truck full of people wearing Wade shirts got through the barricade because they are coming from such village. My favorite group was the ten person orchestra of extremely old women, each hitting a metal rod against another metal rod in a bouncy rhythm.

Shortly before Wade was scheduled to arrive, Jenny and her boyfriend, Dave, came out and met me. The three of us ventured deep into the crowd. When Wade's car rolled down the street we were close enough for him to wave right at us. As soon as his car passed, people who were jogging alongside him began to pushing by us, creating a strong current in the crowd. A bit downstream a man struggled with the police creating another surge in the crowd. When he came into view he was being held by two police men and his face was splattered with blood from an open lump near his eye. It was hard to stay balanced with people pushing every which way. After the pushing stopped we walked around undisturbed.

For a long time after Wade's car passed us nothing at all happened. I don't know why he waited so long to begin his speach. We were beginning to talk about leaving when we saw a large crowd running towards us. Looking past and above them we saw fist and head sized rocks soaring through the air in high, graceful arcs. There were fine pitching arms on those protesters. We ran with the crowd into a family's compound. A few hundred of us stayed in there for a bit, and then as people filtered back out to wait for Wade, Jenny, Dave, and I hopped over the back fence and left.

***

It is now two weeks after the elections. In order to win, Wade had to get more than 50% of the vote. To the absolute delight of my neighborhood, he is reported to have received 55%.

2007-03-16T04:26:00.000-07:00

New Year's Eve
This year I got to celebrate two. The first was the traditional December 31. I was in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, and arguably of West Africa. My friends and I went to the center of town, where we found the streets packed with people celebrating by shooting fireworks at one another. Low grade explosives littered the street, making it feel like a game of keep-away as we kicked small flaming pieces away from us. Being in the midst so many people out celebrating and flaming sparkles in the air above and all around us was thrilling.
The second was on January 30. It is an Islamic holiday called Tamaxarit. Starting in the afternoon kids took to the streets in mobs, banging on drums or on tin cans and asking for gifts. The boys dressed up as girls and the girls as boys, and all wore facepaint. In the evening packs of them came to my compound. They sang, drummed, and danced, and we poured rice into their collection jars. Halloween. The traveling groups of drumming kids celebrated late into the night. The next morning everyone dressed in fancy outfits. We shook hands with one another all morning long and exchanged greetings and best wishes.

2007-03-12T04:52:00.000-07:00

2007-03-12T04:27:00.000-07:00

This morning six other volunteers and I biked an hour into the bush, walking our bikes through the softest parts of the sandy roads, to reach another volunteer's village. I had a bucket strapped to the back of my bike, and in it I had a frisbee, a nerf football, some rice sacks (picture a potato sack), spoons, and a few balloons filled with water. Jenny had another frisbee and several meter-long strips of rope. On the way to the village we picked up a kilo of kola nuts. Kola nuts are big bitter tasting caffeine filled horrid snacks that are given as a sign of respect.

We started talking about this outing yesterday after the regional meeting. (I love regional meetings because they bring all the other volunteers in the area to my site.) We wanted to do something special to celebrate us all being together, and we tossed around ideas ranging from finding a boat and rowing to the coast, to dressing in sheets and hiding in a field pretending to be spirits, to having a simple picnic, before we decided to hold a field day.

We arrived at the village with the noise and gayity of a circus. After we greeted the village chief and gave the kola nuts, we set off for a nearby field with about forty kids in tow.

The events began with some frisbee tossing. Once we were warmed up, the toubobs paired off. We each tied a leg to our partner and then held a three-legged race. When we finished we untied ourselves, strapped Senegalese kids to each other, and cheered them on as they learned to run in sync and race against one another. We followed this by teaching the children how do potato sack races using local rice sacks. While set after set of kids hopped this race we toubobs gathered rocks. For the next game all participants had to first spin around twenty times while looking up, and then place a spoon in their mouths and a rock on the spoon. The race was down the field about fifty feet and back, but hardly anyone made it that far without either falling over or dropping the rock. We tossed a little girl around like a ball, made a human pyramid, and let the kids peg us with the water balloons. Throughout the games people festively tossed the football up in the air like the tortillas at San Francisco's Bay to Breakers race, so you never knew when suddenly this soft football would come falling onto you.

Games over, sun getting hot, and us not wanting to stay so long that the family feel a need to invite the mob of us to eat their lunch, we quickly packed up and biked home.

2007-02-12T02:16:00.000-08:00

7-places
Sept-places are station wagons with seats for seven passengers. One sits beside the driver, and then there are two rows of three seats. The last row is really uncomfortable. The middle row is better than the last row. Whenever I want to travel long distances here, I take a sept-place. I go to the garage and buy a ticket. Either the salesman writes the seat number on it, 1-7, depending on how many people got there before me, or I have to ask him to do so. If the latter, it means that I got the first seat and he was hoping to place me in back and sell the front seat to someone else. If I have any luggage that can not fit on my lap, I have to bargain with the driver about how much I must pay to put it in back. I once saw a driver get away with making a white girl pay for luggage that she was holding in her lap. I tried to argue for her, but she felt the price was too low to fight about. The car does not leave until all seats are bought. This can take minutes or hours. Occasionally, if the car is missing only one more person, the passengers will chip in to buy the final seat so that the car can get going.
I have had two especially colorful sept-place experiences.
I traveled to Dakar a few days before Tabaski, a major holiday on which many sheep are killed. Many of these sheep are transported from one part of the country to another, in what looks to me like a huge sheep-exchange. Sheep are placed in rice sacks (picture a potato sack), their legs are folded under for them, and they are tied up with just their heads poking out. Sacked sheep are placed on tops of automobiles and driven north and south. For most of my ride from Tamba to Dakar, the sheep on our roof was pointed so that he was urinating on the right side of the car. I, thankfully, had the window seat on the left. I felt terrible for him. His "bahs" started as vigorous complaints, but as the hours passed he grew tired and hoarse, until he sounded more like a scraggly little kitten. I had fantasies of cutting him loose, but I could not imagine how to do so without us both getting a beating for it. Close to Dakar, someone got out and took his luggage off the roof. The sheep was re-aimed, and the next time he urinated it came into my window and gave me a faceful of sheep piss.
When my mother and I rode from Kolda to Tamba she got the shotgun seat and I sat behind her. Next to me sat a young woman with a tiny baby. Suddenly, about an hour into the trip, vomit burst out of the woman. A bit of it hit my foot, but the bulk of it got my mom's head, neck, and back. The driver pulled over so I could wipe the chunks out of my mother's hair and try to sop up the liquid. The woman never stepped out of the car. She puked a few more times during the trip, but she had some fabric to catch it. With each vomiting, only the first bit of spray would fly out of her control and on to me.
But these stories are nothing beside other volunteers' experiences. Jenny once had a whole car ride with a sheep pointed to urinate on her side of the car, and the window was stuck in the down position. Another volunteer once sat beside a woman who, after a few hours of twisting and moaning in her seat, delivered a baby while the car kept driving.

2007-02-07T05:53:00.000-08:00

January 20

My mother, uncle, aunt, and cousin recently left from their visit here. It was wonderful having them here. I loved seeing them again, talking face to face for hours, and having them get a taste of where I live.

We started the vacation in Dakar. We spent a long time on Goree Island, where we hired a tour guide to lead us through the slave house and tell us about the island's history. We saw the small rooms where Africans were packed in tight for months until boats were ready to carry them away. This part of the island was devastating, but the rest was of another tenor. The island has beautiful old architecture, flowers everywhere, and a backdrop of the Atlantic Ocean. Necklaces, paintings, carvings, clothing, and more are being sold everywhere. An old, half fallen-down stonebuilding holds a big collection of sculptures made offound items. There are a lot of restaurants thatspecialize in seafood, and there are many chubby catsliving off diners' droppings.

We left Dakar early in the morning January 4th.We drove for about eleven hours, longer than the flightfrom NY to Senegal, until we reached Tamba. The nextmorning we went to Park Niokolo Koba and went onsafari. We saw antelopes, partridges, a large lizard,wild boars, crocodiles, either a rock or ahippopotamus, deer, and beautiful woodlands. Our guidetold us he grew up in the park but that everyone wholived in villages within the proposed park boundarieswas kicked out when the land was declared a nationalpark. My cousin stunned me on the safari by, usingonly gestures and facial expressions, learning aboutthe guide's family, his life in the park, and hisplans for the future. It made me feel like with myPulaar, no matter how limited it is, I have no excusefor not having great conversations with folks here.

On January 6 we drove to Kolda. We stopped on the roadat a school for the disabled. No one was there, butthe gate was unlocked, so we explored the compound. Itwas the nicest looking school I've seen yet. Theschool gets money from an international non-profitorganization, and the interesting architecture,landscaping, cleanliness, black lined with whitestoned walkways for those with limited sight, all spoke to the care and attention put into this school.

When we arrived in Kolda we stopped briefly at myhouse. My Senegalese family gave us a huge and affectionate welcome, and I gave my American family a tour of my hut and the compound. Seeing my huge hut and meeting the kind people I live with made them feelmuch more comfortable about me being in Senegal.

On January 7th we had the most busy day of the trip.We began with breakfast at my favorite bean lady'stent, and then we took cabs to the garden Jenny and I are starting. This garden is on her father's land, onthe main road, and very close to Jenny's house. It is fenced, and the last thing planted there was beans.This makes it idyllic for a demo garden; the land is good and the location makes it easy for people in Jenny's neighborhood to visit. Jenny's parents have told her siblings that watering it will be their responsibility and that they must help with garden construction. We have set up beds demonstrating avariety of garden techniques, and for most of these,we did only a bit of the work ourselves before the kids volunteered to take over. The most satisfying moment came when Jenny and I were setting up a garden hammock, ran into some trouble, and while we werestill pondering how to fix it, saw some kids step inand solve the problem. In Peace Corps you are doingthe best work when a local is doing the work. Such a pleasure.After touring the garden, we went to Jenny's house somy family could see another example of volunteer housing and to meet her family and her bunnies. Ever since her rabbit hutch broke her rabbits have been free range. I'm not keen on the slaughter and eat part of the process, but I love hanging out at Jenny'splace with a rabbit in my lap.

From Jenny's we went to the market. Like ducks with ducklings, Jenny led the pack and I brought up the rear. We showed them a fabric store, the vegetable tables, the spices area,fish tables, the maze of boutiques, and the meat and fetish section. Sometimes I feel strong and capable as I make my way through the market, enjoying the bright colors and vitality of the place, and I imagine it is a bit like surfing. Other times it is crowded, aggressive, hot, overwhelming, and I hate it. I wanted my family to spend enough time in the market to taste both views.

From the market we went to my house, where my host mom was putting the finishing touches on our giant bowl ofyassa poulet (an onion and chicken dish served overrice). She served us in one giant bowl and had another for herself and the rest of the family. I was pleased to see that, for the most part, my family adapted well to eating with their hands. After lunch we hung out in the compound for a few hours. It was lovely. Card games, coin tricks, a kid brought a ball for playing catch, lounging with the family and neighbors. After a few hours we all got dressed in Senegalese outfits andwent to the weekly meeting of my women's group where we danced. After the women's meeting, we went to the regional house. We met Jenny and Nick, and my family got tochat with them while eating fresh watermelon and the okra and onion dish that I make about four times aweek. We stayed until exhausted, and then went home to sleep.

We went to Seck's garden the next morning. This is the demo site that Peace Corps set up. I gave my family the tour, showing them the various techniques being demonstrated. I was upset to see how many of my plots were looking terrible, and how the nebedie trees thatI brought to the garden were lying in a a pile like junk, looking unwatered and dead. Seck's plots looked very nice. I had asked him to take care of my beds before I went on vacation, but I guess he decided not to. Seck was extremely flattering and kind when hespoke to my family about me. Soon after this my uncle, aunt, and cousin left to drive back to Dakar.

The rest of the trip was a lotmore calm. My mom and I spent a few more days in Kolda. We walked around a lot, visited friends ofmine, cooked a Senegalese dish, and basically spenttime talking and laughing together. We traveled upslowly, spending a night in Tamba and another inKaolack. In those towns we simply lounged, seeing virtually nothing outside the hotels. Back up in Dakar we saw an arts market where we got heckled every timea merchant saw our eyes look in the general direction of his or her wares. My mom was great about having fun with this, and she joked and bargained with some men until we had bracelets and a batik for good prices. We spent our final day strolling about Dakar. The sun was hot, so we sat in the shade on the steps of theChamber of Commerce and stayed there for a few hours.Women with baskets of jewelry and dolls, and men witht-shirts, perfume, and shoes, tried to persuade us to buy their goods. In the evening I took my mom to the airport. Saying goodbye was devastating, and only a little less difficult than it had been when I left NY.

In all, it was a wonderful visit. I know somevolunteers discourage their families from coming toSenegal because there is not so much to see here, and because, as my family would agree, it does not offer the most relaxing of vacations, but I would highly recommend having family visit. I love that my familynow knows what my neighborhood looks like, can understand the roosters they hear on the phone, got to see me speak Pulaar, and got an appreciation of what my life is like here.

2007-02-06T10:52:00.001-08:00

Some time in December
Last week Charlie, another volununteer, took me to a village about ten kilometers out of town, to see a woman there named Tacco Balde who has a garden and wants help with it. Jenny was going to join us, but the day before the trip she sliced the sole of her foot with a shovel and was not up for a long bike ride.
I love visiting villages. Everything seems more quiet and calm out there, and the temperature is always a bit cooler outside Kolda. We stopped in a village on the road to greet the chief. He was a kind, merry, grandfatherly man, and he and the women I spoke with seemed delighted by my Pulaar.
After the village we stopped at a sesame seed field. The Senegalese government is funding many sesame fields. It buys the land, seeds, fertilizer, and other supplies, gives men wages to work there, buys the men uniforms and bicycles, and provides funds for a big metal sign, placed out in the middle of the woods, announcing that this is a government project field. It reminds me of the US's depression era work projects.
We reached Tacco's house around ten o'clock. She was modest about her garden, but it is beautiful. She has many plots of okra, tomato, pepper, hybiscus, and more. I look forward to working with her. We talked about mulching, watersaving techniques, pesticides, and fertilizer, but only briefly. I told her I would return with Jenny and we would seriously discuss the options.
Before heading home, Charlie and I stopped in a man's hut, and got into a conversation with two men about american superstitions. I recently read a list of old folk beliefs, so in addition to the normal ones about crossing fingers and not walking under ladders, I was able to provide some more obscure beliefs, like how to use apple seeds to find out who is your true love, which insect to question if your cows are lost, the good fortune that can come from salting a bird's tail, and the perils of doing things on August 1. By the time we left, the men were joking that I was a marabout.
Yesterday, Jenny and I returned to Tacco's house. When we were just beginning the trip and leaving Kolda, a policeman pulled us over. He was not able to see Jenny's helmut. He asked for her Senegalese name, she gave him a false one, wrote out a ticket for 6,000 cfa ($12), and told her to go to the police station to pay it. He did not have a copy of the ticket for himself. Considering his method and that Peace Corps volunteers are the only people in town who ever wear helmets, I assumed he was just joking about the whole thing. Thinking I would join in the play, I eyed his motorcycle, and asked where he was hiding his helmut. He snapped at me that if I said that again he would take me to the station. Luckily, Jenny can charm anyone no matter how annoyed she is, and she was soon chatting with the officer about his family. He eventually took back the ticket. This was an excellent lesson in how to treat policemen.
(I am slowly learning the safety rules. A few weeks ago I asked a teenager for directions. He pointed me to an isolated area. I biked a few minutes that way until I saw it was a dead end, and phoned a friend for directions. I was walking my bike and talking on the phone when the teen came up to me and grabbed the phone out of my hand and my walkman off of my belt. I hate feeling like I can not be alone outside.)
After we got past the policeman, Jenny and I had a scenic ride out to Tacco's house which. When wanted directions along the way, we were lucky to find a gathering of elderly women who had not seen white Pulaar speakers before. I wish I could always make people look so happy by simply saying, "good morning."
Tacco was out in a field, not to return for about six hours, so we just chatted with the kids, looked at the garden, and left. We biked back towards town a bit before turning onto a dirt path and then tromping through some high grass to a shaded space under a tree where we picniced. People have asked me if Senegal is beautiful. We were surrounded by trees and weeds growing wild and birds seranading us. By and large, Senegal might not be a classicaly pretty place, but it certainly has its moments.

2007-02-06T10:52:00.000-08:00

Channukah

Senegal's Israeli Embassy emailed all the Jewish volunteers to invite us to a Hannukah party in Dakar, but that was too far for me to travel. Hannukah is one of my favorite holidays and I did not want to miss it, so I did my own celebrating in Kolda.

I made my menorah from nine empty tomato paste or condensed milk cans that I filled with sand. I could not fit these on my window sill, so I lit my candles in front of my hut, right in the center of my family's compound. Kids gathered every night to watch.

After the lighting, a few kids would join me in the ritual Channukah dance, and then we played Dreidel. I don't have a dreidel here, so we took turns flipping three coins. If none came up heads, you did nothing, for one head you took all, two and you took half, three and you gave one. We played for peanuts, and the kids loved the gambling. The holiday could not have been nicer.

2006-12-19T07:40:00.000-08:00

I am in a club with my neighborhood women. We meet once a week to put money in a pot and to share tea, a meal, and juice. A name is drawn from paper slips in a handkerchief, and the woman chosen hosts the next week's meeting and gets the money in the next week's pot. Everyone wins once before anyone is allowed to win a second time, so we all break even. I thought the weekly gathering was the group's only activity, but a few weeks ago my host mom told that I must buy fabric for a special occasion, and that Madame Byla, one of the members of the group, would sell me the fabric. My mom has cleverly won money away from both me and my guests, so I was suspicious and hesitant. I pressed her for more information, and she explained that all the women were going to buy the same fabric for a party, and that she had already purchased some for herself. With that cleared up, I bought the fabric and had a tailor sew it into a traditional outfit for myself.
On the morning of the party, two men brought a pair of huge speakers and a stereo on a sheret (a donkey-drawn cart), and they set up the sound system in front of my neighbor's compound. That afternoon, the members of my group gathered to cook a meal and a juicy drink. I was involved in the latter, stirring, tasting, straining, tasting, and pouring into bags. The pouring into and then the tying of the sacks is done quickly, almost rhythmically, by the group of women who sit around the bucket of juice, and I was pleased to be invited into this ritual.
Once the meal was prepared, my mom sent me home to bath and dress. Very much a mother, she came into my room after I was dressed to fix the clumsy way I had tied my head scarf and skirt, and to chastise me for thinking I could wear my ordinary sandles; she insisted I wear my fancy sparkly blue flip flops.
Properly dressed, I came outside to find chairs arranged in a semi-circle facing the sound system which was blaring dance music. Someone had splashed water on the sand between the chairs and the speakers so that it would be more floor-like and easier to dance on. Women began to show up wearing the team's colors, and the dancing began. Many people from the neighborhood came to watch and to dance outside the ring of chairs, and the senior man of the area made a long speach blessing the old, the young, the folks of various neighborhoods and countries, new mothers, people who like leaf sauce on their rice, and everyone else. He tried to look serious but could not consistantly swallow his grin. Whenever he felt he had made an especially good point, he would shout, "Let us clap!" and the gang of us would hoot and cheer. Some other men were chosen to be the honored guests, and they were seated at a special table. The women kept going up to greet them deferentially. The dancing lasted about four hours, and then suddenly, at some cue that I never saw, women gathered the chairs that belonged to their household and everyone went home.

2006-12-15T01:33:00.000-08:00

October 25
When I have collected tires on my own I have persuaded men to cut them for me. They use heavy duty knives and are dripping sweat by the time they are through. Seck, my gardener, procured five tires and had them brought to the garden, uncut, so we had to wrestle with that chore ourselves.

2006-11-13T04:26:00.000-08:00

A little while back I had a worm in my left foot. It created a sguiggly raised line as it meandered toward my toes, getting closer every day. I first noticed the line when I found myself scratching an itch on my foot.

I called a Peace Corps doctor,and after I described my symptoms, the first thing she asked was whether there were any cats or dogs in my life. Oh Gidget, the Kolda Peace Corps kitten, dear little playful furball. I remember her playing with my foot one day not long before the itch began. Her claws were out, but the pin pricks were not too bothersome. Perhaps she failed to clean her claws after her last walk through her litterbox, and thus gave me a fresh worm out of her. Does that sound right? But I know some volunteers get their worms from working in dirt, so there is really no telling the source of mine.

The doctor told me to buy two tablets and a special cream that fights worm-induced itches. One tablet I swallowed, and the other I crushed. I mixed the dust with the cream and rubbed it on the worm-trail three times a day for a week. (The tablet is also good at fighting giardia, and I am happy to say I have not had any very sulphuric burps since taking the pill.) After a few days of treatment I saw the line fade slightly, while a bubble like a blister rose at one end. The worm never exited there, at least not that I saw.

I have since taken Gidget to the vet for an anti worm shot and for a vaccination, and the worm line on my foot has disappeared.

2006-11-13T04:16:00.000-08:00

November 4, Saturday

My first fall off my bike happened because my right pant leg got caught in my gears. This trapped my leg, so when the bike began to tip over I was unable to extend a foot. I landed on my knee on soft sand. I lay still for a moment, and the gang of kids who I had just biked past let out a loud cheer for the falling of the toubob.

The second and third falls were because of minor obstacles in the road. No one saw me topple.

Two days ago I took a spectacular spill. The beginning of my ride home from the garden takes me on a very busy paved road. Traffic includes tractors and trucks that the Chinese are using for road repair, cars, motorcycles, Senegalese busses, carts drawn by mules, bicyclists, and pedestrians. All of these have different capacities for speed, so passing and being passed is a constant sport on busy streets. There are no marked lanes, so you can never guess how much a person might swerve to the left or right while proceeding straight ahead.

My work at the garden on Thursday consisted of clearing weeds and pulling up old plants. Most of our tomato plants have expired, and we are replacing the adults with younger plants that are currently in pepinaires. I spent the morning thinking of the future of the garden, the lush produce, and the experiments I will perform. I was biking home slowly, liesurely, when some shmuck sped past me on the left. His handle bars smacked mine, and this made my front wheel snap to the right. I flew off the bike. So many sandy roads in Kolda, and I had the luck to skid to a stop on cement.

Unlike the first time I fell, this time I was instantly surrounded by a concerned crowd. Again and again I see that if a situation is less than quite serious, everyone here will laugh and make fun, but that if there is a real problem, people will do all they can to help. A police officer pulled me to my feet, and about a dozen different people offered to take me to the hospital. My knee was bloody and already swelling, and I had scratches all along my left side from the bit of skidding, but I knew I had nothing worse than scratches and bruises. The crowd guided me to a raised piece of cement designed to keep people from falling into the sewer, insisting I sit and rest. Someone picked up my bike and set it against a wall for me, and an old man came to me with some cotton balls so I could clean up. The shmuck who hit me came back and appologized with a sheepish laugh. He said he had been looking at the oncoming cars and had not seen me. It is a good wake up call. I have been taken by surprise by bikers and pedestrians who were immediately ahead of me, and on one or two occasions I might have passed other bikers with extremely little room to spare.

I biked home with a whole new sense of skittishness, and after lunch I took a long walk. I went into an area I have but little explored. Every second household had a child who, regardless of my greetings and attempts at converstation, squeeled, "toubob!" until I was out of sight. I came across a woman using a long forked stick to bend Nebedie branches into reach so that she could harvest the leaves. With my Nebedie trees at the garden slowly showing signs of life, I have a great and newfound interest in the tree. We spoke at length about how she prepares the leaves. By the end of the walk my knee was stiffer than when I had begun. At dusk, when my little brother and I walked to a trash pile to get good, composted, dirt that we put in small plastic sacks with some flower seeds, everyone could see my limp.

My host mom, who often presents what I find irritatingly inflated, dramatized versions of her feelings, completely dropped her flamboyant personality when it came to my knee and my accident. I was touched. She seemed hurt that I had not mentioned the accident until now, and lightly berated me. She was angry at the shmuck who hit me and at the police officer who did not catch him. When she saw the scrapes on my bike and the dents in my helmet she suggested I ditch the bike and take to walking instead, like the other women in the neighborhood. She insisted I take off my shoes to help circulation, and she commissioned my sister to massage my leg and arm with Bengay cream. Later she brought me dinner in my room, and she drew water from the well for me. When I was getting ready for bed I could hear her telling other people about my accident.

Yesterday I could not bend my knee, so I had a delicious day of relaxation. I spoke and sat with my family for a long time, played violin, read, and helped my mom prepare lunch. I went with my brother to sell juice at the nearby elementary school. My mom makes delicious sweet drinks. She ladles them into sandwich bags, ties them shut, and freezes them. Buyers bite holes in bottom corners and suck out the juice. The school scene was chaotic. Three women and two little girls were selling food and drinks, and about fifty little kids were running, shouting, dancing to complicated clapped beats, climbing trees, and having little fights, all around us. The girl selling limes grabbed a skinny branch and jokingly whacked at younger kids when they stood too close to her limes. One girl kept buying bags and putting them up to other people's mouths until all the juice was gone. A very tall and a very short girl wrapped themselves together to become a three legged giggling creature that chased other kids. My brother and some of his friends hopped onto a big cement rectangle and raced around it until they got dizzy and fell off. The teachers have not yet come to school, so the kids had the whole day to just run around the school's grounds.

In the afternoon I sat under a mango tree with some girls in their late teens. When the sun lit the land where we were sitting we carried the bench across the sandy and sat on the other side of the street in the usual early-evening spot. I had a vocabulary list with me, and we had an impromptu reading lesson when Nene started trying to sound out the Pulaar and English. The schools here conducted in French, so no one gets accustomed to reading and writing in Pulaar. Nene speaks it fluently, but she still had to sound out the verb list. She was especially delighted when she sounded out the English words. I do not know precisely how the English classes are run, but despite the fact that all students take English classes, I know of only two teenagers, Boubacar and Dura, who can actually speak English.

Boubacar lives in my neighborhood. He heard the English and came to join us. He was like an eager puppy. He kept interupting when Nene was trying to sound out words, and when I finally got him to leave the word list to her, he began interupting to show off other words that he knew. For example, he was very pleased to know the difference between, "I am used to X," and, "I used to X." When Nene left to do the evening prayer, Boubacar and I began talking in English. I had him speak about himself. He has been with his girlfriend, Binta, for three years, and he says he is very American about the relationship; he believes in being faithful to her and does not want a second or third girlfriend at the same time. So many men here try to have multiple girlfriends. Likewise, I have spoken to a woman who was proud to say that she has a husband and three boyfriends. That is a lot, but by most standards here, one boyfriend is very little. Boubacar first saw Binta at a dance club. He said he loved her immediately, and he went to her and told her that he is intelligent, hard working, loyal, kind, etcetera, and that if she did not believe him she could ask his friends. She agreed to be his girlfriend that night. Boubacar told me he wants to go to school in Holland so that he can find work there and give money to his family. His dream, he told me with a bright innocent glow, is to have many many cows. I do not see it much in the city, but in villages the collection of cows is a key venture. The cows are not to be eaten or sold. Simply, because we are Pulaars, we want to have a lot of cows. While everyone else I have asked here dislikes George Bush, Boubacar greatly admires Bush because he thinks Bush is bravely fighting terrorism and working very hard to lead the fifty states.

Today my knee is still swollen, but it does not hurt so much. Negotiating my squat-toilet is slapstick, and I could not ride my bicycle today, but otherwise I'm fine.

2006-11-13T04:13:00.000-08:00

October 24, Tuesday

Today was Korite in my neighborhood. The holiday was celebrated yesterday on the other side of town, where they began the Ramadan fast a day before we did. Korite is a very happy occasion; it marks the return to eating and drinking during the day. Besides the general happy air and huge, huge meals, people celebrate a little like Halloween. Everyone, self included, donned their best outfit and set to the street. Instead of, "trick or treat," children and some joking adults ask everyone to give them something that sounds like, "salad bowl." People carry extra small change for this purpose.

In the evening my sister and I sat outside our compound facing the sandy road as if we were a pair of princesses. We sipped cold Orange Fanta as an endless procession of girls and women in their finest clothing and with their hair done up for the occasion paraded past. A couple men came by, but they were all wearing jeans or other casual clothing. Everyone stopped to greet us and ask for our salad bowls. My sister and I discussed the fashions and hairdos that came before us. To me it was a holiday of food, trick or treating, and girliness.

2006-11-13T04:06:00.000-08:00

October 20

Women here wear outfits called compolays. This consists of a big shirt and a wrap around skirt. The shirt can be fitted, but for older women it usually more like a tent. (You can see these in my market pictures.) Because of this design, Jenny did not know her host mother in Thies was pregnant until she was told her mom had gone to a hostpital to give birth.

A few days ago I came home and found my older sister, Nene, reclining in a hammock-like chair. She was wearing only a wrap around skirt tied just above her breasts. The single layer and her position combined to give me a good view of her stomach. It is a basketball. Later, when she was lying on the straw mat, I joined her and congradulated her on the pregnancy. I told her I had only just realized she is pregnant. She laughed, but was not surprised, and she said she is due in December. I commented that she must have conceived in March when I was coming to Senegal, and she told me that indeed it was March, for that was when she got married. I nearly fell over. I have been living with her ever since I got to Kolda. I asked her once if she had a boyfriend and she told me she did not. She had assumed I knew she was married, and in Senegal it is so common for a married woman to have a boyfriend or two that my question was not offensive.

Nene told me she met her husband in the marketplace and immediately fell in love. She lived with him and his first wife for two months before returning to her mother's house to deal with the pregnancy. I think that after the child is born she will move back into his compound. She asked me about my having children, and this led to the topics of birth control, condoms, and AIDS. Again I was shocked to find out that after her first child was born she went onto the pill for two years. I had no idea it was accessible here. She is not a personal fan of condoms but agreed they are necessary if you are sleeping with many people. She has had herself tested for AIDS and other diseases a handful of times. I hope that her husband and his other wife are equally aware of the risks of unprotected sex. This conversation felt like a breakthrough for me. I was thrilled to be talking about disease and precaution, and to find her knowledgeable and open.

I expected to find a very modest and restrained sexual culture in Senegal, but that is not at all the case. I know another volunteer who is working with the owner of a camping ground on the Casamance River. It is a beautiful spot, idyllic for family getaways. It has huts that can be rented for a few days, a single night, or an hour at a time. The vast, vast majority of the man's income comes from hourly clients. A happy sidenote is that my friend once came upon the owner drafting a sign asking clients to please not leave used condoms in the huts.

Yesterday, bolstered by Nene's response, I took my friend Zaorna aside to talk a bit about sex. She is about eighteen, and I know she is crazy about her boyfriend. I told her she could come to me for socks (the popular euphemism for condoms) if she needed any, and that it would be confidential. She burst into shy giggles. She was touched, but she is a virgin and knows how to get condoms at the pharmacy. I am getting the impression that it is generally easier and considered less embarassing to get them here than in the US. We spoke a bit about diseases and pregnancy. Not knowing just what she has already heard, I wanted to impress upon her how easy it is to get sick or pregnant. I got the impression I was saying nothing new. She asked about some specifics of sex and slowly confided that she wants to "give her virginity" to her boyfriend. She is scared of it hurting and scared that her mother would be mad, but she likes the guy a lot and has been dating him for over a year. I asked if she wanted to marry him, and she very frankly said she is too young to know. How would you respond to a smart and beautiful young woman who is considering having sex with someone she really cares for?

2006-11-13T03:59:00.000-08:00

September 24
After some research and consideration, I assembled a list of rotations of pesticides that I want to test. The sprays are almost all made easily from common items. Soap, baking soda, salt, hot pepper, tobacco, garlic, neem (a local leaf), and mint are my ingredients. Dimathoate is the one chemical spray on my list. I want everything I test to be easy and affordable so that local women will be able to copy any techniques that I find especially successful. The rotations involve spraying one of the pesticides in a group once a week. For example, I will spray a certain table of tomato plant with tobacco one week, soap the next, tobacco after, and so on. At most I have four pesticides in one rotation.

Once I decided what my tests should be, I had to figure out how to apply them to the plants. Seck has a big spray pump that he straps onto his back. It holds many gallons of water. Besides being overkill for a little household garden, the hardware stores ask a price that makes such pumps entirely unpractical and unaccessible for individual gardeners. I trolled the market looking for a hand held spray bottle. I could picture a colorful little thing that I have seen in many drug stores in the US, but no one sells those here. I walked up and down a street where merchants set up stands to sell jewelry, toiletries, vegetables, knives, clothing, and the like, looking for a bottle of perfume. I found quite a few, but they were all of the type that have you squeeze out a drop rather than spray. Finally, in a shop that specializes in paper supplies, I found a bottle of strawberry perfume that had a spraying nozzle. And happily, this perfume's label said the product was not tested on and did not contain animals. Funny what makes it to Senegal.

I had the plan and I had the bottle. Now I just had to wait for the weather. The rainy season is near its end, but we are still getting small late evening showers. For about a week after I was ready, every night had showers or just ominous clouds, so I kept postponing the commencement of my experiments. When finally the weather was perfect, I took out my perfume bottle which had been strapped to my bike for a week, and Seck told me he had forgotten that I wanted certain tables and had sprayed everything earlier that day.

A few days later the conditions were finally all right, and I dumped the perfume into another container for my gardener's daughters, Awa and Nafi. I filled up with soapy water and began to spray. For all of four seconds it was gloriously easy, and then the thing broke, and that was the end of that. I tried, Awa tried, and Nafi tried, but we could not fix it. I was resolute on doing the pesticide application that day, so I put the liquid for that table and then for two others onto my hand and petted it onto the leaves.

Two days later, when I was to start pesticide rotations on another few tables, I found that despite my hopes, a good drying had not healed the perfume bottle. I have seen a bottle of Windex in a shop on the way to the garden, so I planned to buy it for this second spraying. The price was more than I expect gardeners will agree to, but I figured it would serve me well enough until I found something better. On the afternoon scheduled for my spraying the shop was closed. I raced around town trying to find another spray bottle before dusk. Hardware stores had nothing except the big expensive pumps. The toubob stores (stores that carry foods toubobs like, from corn chips to candy bars to apples to ketchup), other paper stores, and the gas station all lacked what I wanted. People were intreagued by my mission and by the bucket of foul smelling liquid I was carrying (a mix of garlic, ash, mint, and tobacco), and every store owner I asked had somewhere to send me where they were sure I would find the right bottle. One man promised he could get some in his store for me, but it would take three weeks. Just when I was resigned to another hand application, I biked past the man who had sent me to the gas station, and he gestured for me to try the boutique to his right. I pedaled to it to be polite. I walked in expecting nothing but, low and behold, there on the top shelf was precisely what I wanted, and at a good price, no less.

With the bottle in hand and the sun setting, I gleefully rushed to the garden, where I rinsed some gasoline-like liquid out of the bottle and replaced it with my fragrent mix. I began to spray, and in less than a minute I had thoroughly covered the tomato plants. I let out a whoop to the sky and danced, jubilant that my pesticide testing was finally getting underway. I had to share this with someone, so I called my mom in New York. She called back on her phone card, and as darkness descended I talked to her and slowly made my way through the other sprayings. I had to use the light on my cell phone when I mixed the baking soda solution.

The next morning Seck told me that the guard at the garden had called him the prior night because he saw someone in the garden after dark. Seck said he ran from his house to the garden, and when he whispered that he was, "well armed," he gestured as if he had a gun in his pocket. Grand guard system, and crazy old gardener. But I sprayed! And, after all the preperations, it was easy.

2006-11-01T11:57:00.000-08:00

Amy Lau is amazing, and I wanted you all to know this. Besides being an fine writer and a wonderful friend, she is able to beat blogger into submission. She was able to post the pictures that are in the posts below. I spent a long time trying to do this myself, and I could not.

Amy Lau, you are incredible. Thank you!

2006-10-30T11:34:00.000-08:00

Goat on a Bike

Commonish sight, though
usualy the goat is strapped on directly without any
bowl. Looks comfy, no?

2006-10-30T11:32:00.000-08:00

October 15, Sunday
Yesterday Jenny and I got together for some ocular
health, as pictured. Charlie took the photo, and after we looked at it, I
showed Jenny other pictures on my camera. She looked
at the cockroaches and told me she had the same
picture. I was stunned. I took the photo thinking I
was recording a rare instance of siamese twin
cockroaches. Nope. This is a photo of cockroaches
having sex.

2006-10-30T11:09:00.000-08:00

Another market pic (it wouldn't fit in the last post)

2006-10-30T10:58:00.000-08:00

I have been lousy about updating my blog, and I am sorry. I have a list of things I want to write about,and soon I will, but wanting to do things in order has been preventing me from writing and posting on a whim,so, enough of trying to post chronologically.I recently went out on a photo taking expedition. I have been nervous about taking pictures of people, unsure of how adults would feel about being photographed and worried that, like at my house,children would swarm around me if I took out my camera in public. For the most part people were indifferent, the strong reactions I received were all extremelycheerful. The women I photographed at the market kept mooning for the camera and urging me to photograph this friend of theirs and that friend. One shy old women kept jokingly ducking her head under her skirt, peaking out at me with a mock-coy grin. The women made it festive, and then they gave me many vegetables for free. I do not know why. I wonder if they were happythat their images would go to the USA, pleased by my apparant interest in them, or simply enjoying the new element in their daily routine.

The market is a hectic, colorful, loud, fragrantplace. I confined my photos to the vegetarian sellers. People also sell fish out of buckets. I am always especially careful when I walk past the fish sellers,fearful that in the rush of people I might lose mybalance and land in the wet silver and red pile. Meatis cut straight off carcuses, and buyers can insist that the butcher pull a handful of fat off the meatbefore weighing it. I avoid these areas. In the vegetable area food is grouped and sold in piles. Three okra will make one pile of okra, and a pile costs 25 cfa. As pictured, oil is sold from a bowl.The vendor will fill a bag for you while you wait. The tan bags in that photo are peanut butter.

Bananas are often sold off heads. Please note that the woman photod is working with her baby on her back.

In addition to the inner market, which is tight and crowded, womenset up stands, buckets, or blankets on the sides of streets. With vegetables there is some room forhaggling price, but because so many women sell the same vegetables, often there is a set rate that will not vary. At first, the market place was an overwhelming universe that I strove to avoid. I know I must be acclimating, because now the market has a carnival feel for me. I am including a lot of photos of the market in hopes that this will help you get the feel of the place.

2006-10-25T14:03:00.000-07:00

October 13, Friday

When Peace Corps first issued bicycles to my stage, I was disappointed to see that my bike had a platform in back instead of a front basket. During my first days in Thies I bought a long strip of black rubber: the Senegalese bunjee cords, good for tying down anything from a stack of books to a goat. I was nervous about using the back of my bicycle. The balance seemed precarious, and I thought it would be too easy for someone to swipe something behind my back. Slowly I have adapted, and now it is rare for me to not have a book, frisbee, a cat in a basket, or bottle of pesticide strapped on. Lately, however, I have had more interesting items.

The Halloween party is going to be held in Kolda. Part of my role in preparations is to collect bones. I have enlisted the help of a few Senegalese friends, giving them only the vague explanation that another volunteer wants bones and metal scraps for an art project. This seems more palatable than the truth, which is that I want to give party goers the option of constructing their own gris-grises (magical charms).

In the days after I returned to Kolda from Thies I spent a lot of time watching the river and clouds from a seat under a tree. A cow died near my sitting place, so I also got to observe a gathering of vultures. On Wednesday I counted the few bones I had picked off of roads and trash piles and realized this method of collection would leave the party sorely low on bones. So, I went to see about the cow.

The cow died off the path on a patch of land that, as the Casamance River rose in the rains, became completely submerged. The river has been dropping every day this week. I found the cow's skeleton sitting in very shallow mud. With red muck squishing onto my sandals and between my toes, I harvested. My bicycle has no kick stand, so I had to hold it with one hand while plucking up bones and placing them into the big bucket I had strapped onto my bike. Happily, between the vultures, the water, and the sun, the bones were essentially devoid of meat. A few vertebrae were held together by a cord, and the jaw bones were disarmingly black on their bottom sides, but otherwise the bones were clean.

When my bucket was full of wet, off-white bones, I began to carefully push my bicycle through the mud and back onto the path. I was almost back on the hard packed sand when I slipped, the bike tilted, and the bucket leanedon the rubber cord, stretching it until the bucket had tilted so much that all the bones had tumbled, clickety clack, to the ground. When I regained my balance I saw that the only thing left in the bucket was a collection of little black beetle-like bugs. I guess they had been inside the bones.

Talibes are little boys who study Islam and beg for money. They run around cities with empty tomato cans hanging from their necks. Many of them know all the volunteers by name. Their usual manner of blocking my way with an outstretched palm and a demand does little to endear them to me, but when a pack of talibes materialized on the path after I dropped my bones, they looked like skinny little angels. At my request, they put the bones back into my bucket. I thanked them profusely and put a big donation into the eldest's tomato can. I then tightened the rubber strap and walked the bike to the regional house, not daring to take a protective hand off of the bucket. At the house, I spread the bones on cement in the sun. In a few days I will turn them over, and some time afterwards I will soak them in bleach water.

After lunch I went looking for my little brother, Omar. We had had plans to go gather cow paddies together. It turned out he was sick, so Neenee found me another boy, Janka. He led me to a pasture that is rich with fresh brown paddies. Neenee had already established that I should give him some money for helping me. I decided to augment the agreed wage, and this gave me a cleaner conscience about standing back and watching as he and a few other kids filled the bucket. Cow paddies, especially the fresh steamy variety, are much heavier than bones, and the way I had tied the Senegalese bunjee cord to support the bones was not good enough to hold the new load. I barely had biked a meter before the bucket tipped. Out plopped my turds. It is good that I can bring laughter to old men sitting under trees.

Janka and the others refilled my bucket, and one of the old men retied the rubber strip. With the pastoral fragrance wafting off the back of my bike, I pedaled through town to the garden, where I put the manure in a rice sack and put the sack in a barrel of water. In a few weeks I should have a lovely batch of manure tea, and in the meantime, I have a patch of the garden where it is best to hold one's breath.

Nebedie trees have very nutritious leaves. Another volunteer told me that if I have an official request form, the government's garden service will give me young trees for free. I talked to Seck, my gardener, about this, and he wrote up a request for thirty trees. Yesterday I biked out to the government building and traded Seck's paper for a stamped official request. The man who helped me surprised me by speaking English. I asked where he had learned it, and when he answered I initially though I misheard. Israel! I asked in Hebrew if he spoke Hebrew, and he replied in kind. He was in Israel to study agriculture. He loved it there. Although Islamic himself, he spent most of his times with Jews, and he raved about how he found the Jews so open and warm. He was struck by how Tel Aviv is such an international and non-racist city.

At the government's tree garden I met Mamadou, the care-taker. He has thousands of young mango, papaya, orange, lime, neem, nebedie, and other trees. They are kept in sacks, and the sacks are in long rows and lines on the ground forming rectangles of bushy gatherings of leaves. They are waiting to be taken and planted. Mamadou selected fifteen of the best looking Nebedie trees and placed them in my bucket, telling me thirty would be too heavy to do in one trip. He also filled my purse with fresh limes.

I biked away happy to have seen such successful gardening and excited about the future of my trees. Almost as soon as I was out of sight of Mamadou's fence, the bucket, predictably, tipped over. Young Nebedie trees have long thin truncks. When they landed on the sand, many of these trunks bent about 150 degrees, placing them beside the sacks in which their roots were housed. A teen named Usmaan appeared out of nowhere, and he held my bike as I reloaded and restrapped. Then, after I took a few steps and the bucket fell yet again, he restrapped it on. He made it so tight that the round bucket became a rectangle.

Today I went back to Mamadou to get the rest of the trees. I told him of my troubles with the bucket. He responded by grabbing a machette and disappearing behind his hut. I heard him hacking at something, and he soon came back with a big Neem branch. He used his machette expertly, using only three swift strong strokes, to cut the branch into four shorter sticks. He lay them across the back of my bike and then tied the bucket on top of this new wide platform. My ride to the garden was brilliantly uneventful.

Nebedie trees are named such because they, "never die." When I got to the garden today I realized I had been an idiot in placing yesterday's trees by the chainlink fence; now those poor, very bent and scratched trunks, hold no leaves. Goats. Today I moved all the trees to a spot in the center of the garden, safe from the goats who wander around Kolda. Many of the tree sacks had long slices in them as a result of roots grown wide and the bumpy trip to the garden, so I had to transplant the trees into new sacks. As of this afternoon, nearly all the trees look terrible. It appears I may have done the impossible.

This evening I took my bucket off of my bike and went for a short ride, relishing the absence of tail-weight.

Post Script:

I wrote this entry a while back. The halloween party has been canceled. Nick's birthday was on the twenty-first, so Jenny and I used some of the bones to make the pictured wind chime. At first, my rabbit raising-and-slaughtering friend refused to touch the bones, despite the fact that I had bleached them. She confined her work to the cutting and braiding of fabric strips. But as the piece took shape she became more involved, and before we were through she was cramming a knot of fabric into a skull's nasal cavity. Nick loves his present. We will continue collecting bones and will make JennyHeatherWindchimes the most popular gift among volunteers across the country. I do not know how Nick's community has responded to the new decoration on his tree.

The manure tea is ripe, and I have begun feeding it to plants at the garden and at my house.

The Nebedie trees spent a few weeks doing a very impressive job of looking dead: leafless, brown, and leaning heavily. Evidently they disagreed with the transporting and the transplanting. However, true to their name, four trunks now have the start of leaves on them, and a Senegalese girl easily pointed to the places on many of the still barren trunks where she expects leaves to soon sprout. I am amazed.

2006-10-25T12:40:00.000-07:00

September 26, Tuesday
Ramadan began on Sunday night with the spotting of the moon. I was biking through the market when the moon appeared. Everywhere, people were standing with their fingers and eyes pointing west towards the glowing sliver on the horizon. People in another part of town saw the moon Saturday night, so they have already started fasting. I hear the a good answer for why I am not fasting is, "haa joni, mi yii'aani lewro o." This means, "I haven't seen the moon yet."
I was going to fast, or at least I was going to try. Jenny did the entire fast last year, and she said it won her a lot of respect in her neighborhood, and it showed people how far determination can take a person; whereas they fast for religious reasons, they appreciated that she was doing it simply to be part of the community. Quite a few volunteers have said fasting last year, and then breaking fast with their neighbors, brought them closer to their communities. In the months leading up to Ramadan my family teased me sometimes by saying that because I live here I would have to fast whether I liked it or not, other times saying that while they fasted I would not be able to. I wavered between wanting to fast to prove that I could do it, and wanting to not fast to demonstrate that they can not control me. Ultimately, I decided to fast on the first day and then decide about the second day.
Yesterday morning I woke before sunrise, drank about two liters of water, cooked and ate a traditional Senegalese dish, and felt terrific. The pre-sun weather was cool, and I considered taking a walk. A cloud burst pursuaded me to stay home. Within an hour of sunrise I was explosively sick. I thought that maybe with all I had already drunk I could still get through the day, but it quickly became apparent that I would be wise to rehydrate. I spent the day weaving between my toilet and my bed, watching my temperature rise to 102. In the evening I spoke to Neenee. She asked about my diet and then laughed. She believes my breakfast did me in. I had made a peanut sauce out of raw peaunt butter. I had boiled the peanut butter, but she said that because I boiled it for less than an hour, toxins remained. I ran this by Jenny, and she disagreed. She has eaten plenty of raw peanut butter without any malaise. She says I was simply hit by the good old oral-fecal cycle that plagues so many of us in this land of no toilet paper and little running water. Maybe my peanut butter was old.
Today I don't feel up to fasting, and now that the possibility of doing the whole month is dashed, there is little appeal in depriving myself of food and water for all sunlit hours.
So far, people are not visibly tired or grumpy, even in the afternoons. However, come evening, my neighborhood erupts into party. I have been waking up at all hours of the night to the sounds of people eating and laughing.

2006-09-30T13:51:00.000-07:00

September 23
Last Sunday my host mom, Neenee, won the lottery at the women's gamboling group. This is a group of 40 women who meet weekly to put money in a pot and eat together. Each week a woman's name is drawn, and on the following Sunday she must host the group. She has to prepare tea, a meal, and a sweet drink, and then she will receive the money collected that week. It is a savings group. Once a woman's name is drawn, her name is removed from the pot until all the women have won. No one makes money on this, but they enjoy gathering and getting the big sum of cash. It is a pleasure to see the women relaxing together. Two weeks ago a rainstorm began during the meeting and we had to run inside. I was surprised to see how the women, dressed in fancy clothing for the occasion, laughed about getting drenched. At the end of the meal, after the juice was served, the women picked up their shoes, lifted their skirts, and went skipping into the rain. I skewered my foot at the beach in Mboor, so I was scared to go barefoot. Still, I admired how these women walked straight ahead, swerving only to avoid the deepest puddles, laughing as they went.
Neenee won the lottery, but she insisted that the honor be given to me first. Later, when my name is drawn, she will host a meeting and collect the money. Because there was the chance that Ramadan would start on Sunday, it was decided that I would host the meeting today, Saturday, so that we could assemble during daylight as we usually do and still eat.
I was overwhelmed by what I had to do.
Thankfully, Binta, the youngest woman in the group, was assigned to help me. Before Neenee and I had walked all the way home, word of my winning had reached the girls who sit near our compound. When we came into sight, Nene, a girl who has recently made it her prerogative to teach me Pulaar vocabulary, told me she would make the tea, and that she and Calle would prepare the juice with me. Such a relief.
This morning Binta came to the compound to pick me up, and we went to market with one of Neenee's buckets and a shopping list. Although my first choice was for a simple vegetarian dish, Neenee and Binta were such good advocates of doing a dish that the women would love, namely, a meat dish, that I succumbed. I have seen how the animals are treated here. They are mostly free, and they walk through town with as much confidence and safety as anyone. It eases my conscience a little.
Market. Some time I will describe it and will include pictures. It is crowded like a middle school hallway between classes, on mud, with women beckoning you to their tables of piles of vegetables, some bright and attractive, some molding. Binta took care of getting us the right prices while I hurried after her, trying to not let people squeeze between us. Chunks of bodies hang all around the meat section. I looked at my feet a lot while Binta found the vender she likes and haggled over cuts.
I helped with the cooking, but not very much. Senegalese women can chop, pound, peal, and do everything else so much faster than I. Still, I tried. Jenny came over, and she sat with me, Binta, and Nene while I pounded onions and spices. The scene was picturesque. The four of us chatted in Pulaar about our boyfriends and the names of our future children, teasing one another a lot.
To make the juice I selected for the gathering, we had to squeeze the fruit a lot, sticking arms up to elbows into the bucket. Fingers are licked, kids cough, utensils from here and there are dunked into the juice. Before I came to Kolda I was advised to never watch the cooking process, for I will be eating it whether or not I can picture how it was made. Yes, I see now. The juice was thick and delicious.
Each woman in the group is required to provide seating for the others. Much to my relief, as the hour approached chairs started to appear. Some little girls had been sent door to door to request plastic chairs.
When the women began to arrive, Neenee pulled out the nice TV and put on a DVD of music videos. Many of the women insisted on having a turn dancing with me, and I forced others to dance by tossing my head scarf into their laps. Binta served the meal, giving me a special portion that lacked meat. Most women took the time to thank me for hosting before they left. I do not think they usually do that.
Through the weekly gatherings I am able to see my Pulaar improving. Little by little I can grasp more words in their conversations, and occasionally now I can contribute, even if they were not speaking slowly for me. These matriarchs greet me on the road and in town. Being part of this group and having these women care for me is making Kolda feel like a smaller, warmer place.

2006-09-30T13:18:00.000-07:00

September 22
Yesterday afternoon my host mom, Neenee, asked or told me that today she would be having a group of boys over to pray in my hut. She was vague. Hoping that if I just followed the Senegalese way of politely agreeing to a date even when there is no intention to show up, I nodded and changed the subject. We have had issues with my hut and precisely who should be using the space. She thought that she would be able to continue napping in the livingroom as she had been doing before I came. She walked in and napped a few times, much to my silent chagrin. When she one day told me to open the hut so she could lay down I refused to do so, and a small fight ensued. She insisted that if I want to be Senegalese I must embrace the Senegalese way of sharing things and space, while I explained that as an American, or more specifically, as someone who is constantly called to, watched, and approached in public, I need a safe space of my own to keep me from losing my mind. She was angry, but for a long time she accepted this.
Although it had been my intention to be elsewhere, away from home, with my hut locked, at the prayer hour, I forgot, and five o'clock found me practicing violin in my bedroom. Neenee knocked on my window's door, and she told me the boys had arrived. While I packed up my violin, she moved my desk and chair into the corner of my livingroom. She set a bowl of food and a bowl of water where my desk had stood, and after the boys came in, she told me to exit. There were nine boys, ranging from 11 to 24 years old. Two of them live in my compound, and I recognized most of the others from the neighborhood.
The boys ate in silence while Neenee and I sat outside. She explained to me that she was doing "seduka" by hosting them. She never said why they had to be in my hut rather than in her batiment or on the cement under the shade structure where people often congregate, and I did not ask. Soon the boys beckoned us back into my hut. Neenee placed my hands in my lap, palms up, and instructed me to say, "amen," whenever the boys finished a phrase. There was chanted, alternating between one soloist, the group in unison, and the occasionally the group mouthed silently in unison. When they finished the prayers they brushed their hands over their faces and left. Neenee and I put my room back to how it had been, and then she poured the bucket of water on the floor in my doorways.

2006-09-30T12:47:00.000-07:00

September 10
A noteworthy first:
Before going to bed last night I shut my hut's door. Since getting home, this was my first time doing so while inside. As I pushed the door shut, forcing it so the lock's mechanisms would line up, I briefly thought of the way I had to slam into the door yesterday each time I wanted to open it. While I was in Thies the rainy season finally picked up speed, and Kolda got a lot of rain. My wooden door frame, which was already curvy, swole in the humidity. But I had water in my hut, and I knew that in a pinch I could ask somone to punch the door for me in the morning.
Come morning, I couldn't open it. The little handle nailed onto my door did not give enough leverage. With the ease of one who has always had to carve her way out of her hut after a strong rain, I reached above the door and slipped my potato-tire knife out of its sheaf. I have been keeping the knife there because while trying to decide where to store it I noticed a curved piece of metal nailed above my door. The knife fits perfectly. I wonder if I stumbled upon a prior tenant's weapon holster, or if this once held a fetish to protect the hut. I placed the knife in a spot where the door did not meet the frame, and I sliced into the swollen wood until I was able to force the door open. After this I continued shaving off thin strips of wood until the door had regained freedom of motion. I then put bike oil on my skeleton doorkey to grease the lock which had been grinding unwillingly, and went to draw water for my bath, wondering on the career assessment test that once advised I become a locksmith.

2006-09-16T03:45:00.000-07:00

I am now back in Kolda after three weeks of training in Thies. The best thing about the training was seeing my friends again. We traded stories of our successes, stresses, our homes, families, hopes, concerns, and so much more. It was overwhelming to finally be surrounded by English speakers who understand what I am going through and have insights and advice to make it easier, and tales of their own beside which I realize I am doing just fine. The three weeks were far too packed for me to describe, so I will just give some highlights.
The rainy season started proper during training. The urban aggies and the environmental ed volunteers did a lot of training together outside, practicing how to make improved beds and how to garden in various containers, including buckets, rice sacks, sliced plastic boxes, and whatever else we could find. On one rainy daye day Clare knocked me into a wrestling match, and once thoroughly covered in mud, we chased down our friends until about fifteen of us were slinging mud at one another. Living in Africa is indeed dangerous. The mud and sand pressed into my ear resulted in a week long painful ear infection that made everything sound like it was coming to me through water. All better now.
The hands on gardening experience during training was priceless. Container planting, grafting, dealing with seeds for trees, testing seeds, making pesticides, etc. It replaced knowledge of theory with actual understanding, and now I feel much better equipped to work in the garden here and teach others.
Language class was tough. Nick opted to switch into the French class, leaving me alone with Samba. We covered a lot of material, and I have a full notebook now to study. He introduced some fascinating new grammar structures. The way syllables can be added to verbs to change their intent is like a mathematical equation. I can't do the logic fast enough to hear it in conversation now, but I am beginning to be able to use the in-fixes.
Weekends were heaven. After the first week of training about twenty of us rented a house on the beach and spent two days swimming and lounging. I loved being in the ocean in a rain storm.
The second weekend I stayed in Thies for my little sister's birthday party. My host mom bought a fancy cake for the party, and lots of popcorn and sweet bread. We set the coffee table outside with a table cloth, fake flowers, and Fanta bottles, with a padded chair behind it like a throne. Many kids from the neighborhood came, and we danced and danced. Most presents were candies. I gave her a game of memory, which we played a lot later in the week. Getting back with my Thies family felt like coming home. These people were very kind to me, and it was a pleasure to be able to speak with them in so much more depth than when I had last seen them. Also, they have hosted many volunteers, and they were understanding about my spending most nights out with friends.
At the end of training some volunteers threw a big party on the beach. I love how much the ocean has been part of my life here. Most people dressed as if going to a fancy party in the Hamptons. The tailors here make it possible for people to draw clothing and have it materialize the next day.
It is hard to know what to say about the past few weeks. It was a thrill to be around friends, and so many, and with so little time before we all had to pack up and go back to our corners of Senegal, it felt like a frenetic rush to get as much color and life as we could out of the limited time. I had long rambling talks with a lot of the folks, lots of playing together, generally feel closer to the lot of them now, and suspect it will be a full year before I see some of them again. Peace Corps is about isolating you from the folks you love, thus forcing you to love the folks you're with.
Traveling back home was an adventure. I rode with other volunteers most of the way, but eventually I was alone, and there I found complications. The driver of the sept-place (a station wagon with seven seats for passengers, common transit vehicle) told me he could take me to one town, and from there I could catch a car to Kolda. He neglected to say that I would have to wait over night for said car. Luckily, two women and a man in the car with me saw my dilemma and invited me to come home with them. I had been talking with one of the women, and had rather hoped for and slightly expected the invitation. I love the hospitality in this country. The family lives on the outskirts of town. Their land borders on fields, and the area has no electricity, making it a beautiful and peaceful place to spend the night. The moon was full. I sat out with their family as we ate dinner, which was, much to my relief, vegetarian. The family was surprised to see the random toubob in their midst, and it was fun to see the confusion on everyone's face when neighbors visited in the morning. The family spoke Pulaar, so we were able to chat. Mostly I fell back on miming, and I was able to make them laugh a lot. They gave me the bed to sleep on, and I expected to share it. Instead, the family slept on a mat on the floor. In the morning I helped the daughter light the fire to boil water for coffee, bathed in the open roofed out house (such a pleasure!), helped clean the bedroom a bit, and after breakfast was walked back to the garage, where the man of the family secured the front seat of a bus for me.
Back in Kolda now, I am excited and nervous about starting work proper. The first thing I want to do is attack the spider mite problem in the garden. The little bugs have launched a full attack on the garden's tomatoes and eggplants. There are chemicals that can fix this, but I want to focus on solutions that will be easily accessible to the average gardener, so I will be using garlic, red pepper, tobacco, and the likes to, inshallah, banish the mites. I read in one garden manual that basil can be used to combat spider mites. This would be a blessing, for basil grows here like a weed, but every where else I have looked, sources say basil attracks spider mites. If you have any advice on spider mites, please send.

Back in Kolda

Today I got an email from Peace Corps saying that if I do not send in the medical part of my application soon, the rest will expire, and I will have to start applying from scratch.

2006-08-07T13:36:00.000-07:00

August 5
If you lay an old car tire flat on the ground, cut the top, widening the opening as far as you can, lay plastic inside the tire to hold water, and then fill the tire with something like peanut shells or dirt, you have a nice little planting container that you can use to grow big plants or use to grow many smaller ones that you will later transplant. We have quite a few tires like this at the garden. It is a good way to grow food in Senegal because discarded tires can be found for free, plants in tires do not need to be watered as often as do plants in ground, if ground in your yard is rocky or too sandy you can still grow food in your yard using tires, and you can move the tires in and out of sunlight as the day passes and as the plants grow stronger.
I recently read about a method of growing potatoes in tires that really excited me, so for the last girl’s club meeting the local volunteers and I took the girls to the garden and began the potato tire process. Using a tire that was already cut, Jenny showed the girls how to prepare a tire for planting. Then I took cuttings from the sweet potato bed, the girls pinched off their lower leaves, and each girl planted a cutting. All of the cuttings have lived and grown long, so today, two weeks later, I was ready to take the next step.
This morning I biked to the bridge over the Casamance River. I had previously noted in passing that the trash heap going down the hill to the water was spotted with tires, and I had planned to climb down and grab a couple. However, on closer examination, I got the willies thinking about climbing down through all the garbage. Jenny has told me that the best way to get tires is to send some kids to get them, and then have the tires appear at your house as if by magic. I had hoped to do have the personal triumph of finding my own potato tires, but given the choice between wading and probably slipping though a dump, and enlisting help, I quickly relinquished the idea of doing my tires alone. One of the boys who lives in my compound works for a mechanic near the river. I did not know just where, so I biked slowly down the row of mechanics’ shops until a kid called my name. I asked him where Omar was, and he pointed me to the shop where he is apprenticing. Omar took me to his instructor, Saliu, who was intrigued by the problem of finding tires for a garden. To make him understand that what I wanted was old, beat up, otherwise useless, and thus free tires, I took him back to the river to point out the discarded tires. I told him I wanted those tires but did not want to walk down there. He affirmed that I had made the prudent choice, and then looked mischievously at the kids who had followed us.
One thing I love about Senegalese culture, having entered the culture as an adult, is that adults can ask kids to do anything. Kids are routinely asked to buy things from shops down the street, cook tea, go next door to get hot coals for making tea, give someone the cup that is by that person’s feet, do laundry, or do whatever older people do not want to do. And the kids don’t refuse. So, when Saliu told the kids to hurry down the trash pile and lug up some tires for me, down they went. Saliu and I smiled at each other, delighted in our lot of not being little Senegalese kids. I could have asked kids to do this on my own, but I would have felt that an element of their obedience stemmed from my being a toubob. It was nice to be beside Saliu and know the kids were doing his bidding purely because he is older than them. And judging by how much fun it looked like they were having, I bet they were pretty happy to be told to go run on top of the garbage.
The first tire brought up to us had a big crack down the side. I would have accepted it and just hoped the tire would last, but Saliu reprimanded the kid and sent the tire rolling and bouncing down to the river. The next two were suitable. I expected to carry the tires to the garden on my bike, and I wanted to lose any extra weight before strapping them on, so as soon as the first good tire brought to us, I took out my kitchen knife and began to cut the tires. Cutting tires is hard work, and I had a hunch that a mechanic and a posse of little mechanics in training would not allow me to do any hard work. Indeed, I cut only a quarter of one side of a tire before the knife was politely taken from me. Saliu and the boys got through the first tire beside the river, but by the end of it they had had to resharpen the knife on the cement sidewalk many times, and the knife was no longer in any ways sharp, and you would never know it had been a serrated knife this morning. So a boy grabbed each tire, another took my bike helmut, and someone walked my bicycle as Saliu led us to the tent where a man cuts and sews thick rubber for bags for wells.
Saliu explained what we wanted and then pushed me forward to greet the man. He and I exchanged pleasantries, he cleared a place for me to sit, and then he cut the second tire for us. This tire had metal wire running through it and was much more difficult to cut. The bag-maker bloodied his hand in the process, but this seemed to bother me far more than it did anyone else. He did not make the opening as wide as I wanted, but I did not want to complain.
Tires readied, I said my thank yous and began to lift one onto the back of my bicycle. Saliu patiently shook his head at me, and again some kids carried the tires and someone walked my bicycle as Saliu took us to his shop, where a kid set my bike inside. I sat with Omar on some huge car part, but then, at Saliu’s word, a kid ran off and soon returned with a bench for me. Saliu handed me his ID to look at while he went off to get his motorcycle. Soon I was leading Saliu to the garden, with Omar sitting on the back of the motorcycle, holding a tire on each side of him. We passed a man going slowly on the road with a goat strapped on to the back of his bicycle. I’ve seen this many times. The goats, judging by their calm, have no qualms about being a bicycle passenger. This was the first time I stole a quick back-scratch as I passed.
I had told the boys I wanted car-sized tires, but I had not known if that was specific enough. Luckily, the tires we brought to the garden are the same size as the one in which the girls planted the potato cuttings. We laid a tire on top of the potato tire. Understanding the process, Saliu looked at the tire cut by the bag maker and pointed out that the narrow openings on both sides would prevent the potatoes from having as much space as they should, and he volunteered to come back tomorrow with a good knife to finish the job. Omar brought a wheelbarrow full of peanut shells from the pile in the corner of the garden, and we filled the second tire with shells until only about two inches of each cutting was visible.
Eventually this will become a potato tire tower, seven or eight tires high, full of sweet potatoes.
Jenny wanted some peanut shells for a tire for her host mother, so Omar and Saliu helped me fill the big rice sack I had brought, and then they strapped it onto my bike for me. I believe they would have shuttled it to her house had I asked.
This evening I dug a plot in my backyard, roughly two meters by one meter by 30 centimeters. I did not finish digging until after dark, so I will have to wait until tomorrow to line the plot with plastic, refill it with dirt, and transplant sprouts from my pepinaires.

2006-08-07T13:29:00.000-07:00

July 29

I just cleaned my water filter. The “candles,” the white chalk-like fingers through which the water must pass, were coated in a brownish slime. This is hardly a great monumental event, but it was my first time scrubbing well-water goo off filter candles.

On Tuesday morning Jenny and I biked out of town to meet Whitney on the road to her village. She lives about 45 minutes out of Kolda and gave me an open invitation when I first got here. I have been putting off the visit, wanting to get a bit more competent in Pulaar before trying to chat with a village of strangers who would be speaking pure Fulakunda, and not the Pulafuta-Fulakunda-French-Wolof melange of Kolda. Last week I finally felt ready, so we made the date. Riding to her village took us from urban Kolda to outskirts, off the paved road and onto soft sand, through narrow paths where grasses scraped our legs, and into a beautiful backcountry far from electric wires and crowds of buildings.
When we arrived at Whitney’s village women danced and clapped to welcome us. I was able to manage basic greetings and some simple exchanges, but Jenny, with her year of experience, did most of the talking. Where I have a huge hut and no private land, Whitney has a tiny hut with a big private backyard. A quarter of it is taken up with her bathroom, which is a big cement tank sunk in the ground with a shoe box sized opening on top. The majority of her yard is a corn field. She has two long rows of okra, and a thriving watermelon plant.
After we cooled down in the hut, we went out to the village’s fields. From a selfish point of view, the fields are beautiful. Long stretches of green and brown, patches of trees, a pair of women breaking ground, wide sky above spotted with fluffy clouds. I am finding a new passion for sky gazing. From a practical point of view, the sight was frightening. Tuesday marked thirteen consecutive days without rain in these fields during what should be the peak of the rainy season. The field should be covered in tall green stalks, and we should be home-bound by the pouring rain. More and more I am hearing people discuss the lack of rain and the impact it will have on the winter’s food supply.
When we returned to Whitney’s hut two women appeared with a gift for Jenny. A third woman had taken an instant liking to Jenny, and she had gone biking to the next town to buy her a few pieces of candy. As is custom, she gave them to her friends to act as go-betweens. Whitney said this is common. Friendship-at-first-sight. She has seen many friendships sprout from this kind of gift giving. It seems people simply agree they are going to be friends, skipping all preliminaries, and proceed as if they are already close to each other.
Lunch was served to us in Whitney’s hut. By this time Justin, another volunteer, and Hamidy, Whitney’s boyfriend, had joined us. Lunch was white rice with a sauce of follere leaves (I found out that follere is hibiscus) and okra. The sauce is a bit bitter, but it has good texture and feels very nutritious, which at this stage is more appealing than a good taste. Hamidy cooked up some bissap juice. This is made from dried flower of the hibiscus boiled in water. He served it hot with a lot of sugar. It is very similar to the juice from a fresh batch of cranberry sauce. After lunch we took a blanket out to a nearby field and lay under a tree, surrounded by kids. I tried to teach Hamidy some partner balancing, and the kids mimicked us. They were too shy to try it with me, but Whitney thinks they will practice on their own. Clouds rolled in, and we could hear thunder from all sides, but the direction of the wind correctly told us that the rain would not hit us. However, the wind and the shield from the sun made the lounging outside simply perfect. Jenny and Justin left around four o’clock. Justin escorted Jenny most of the way to town, and then he turned around and went home. Two weeks ago this would not have been thought necessary, but recently a girl was found raped and murdered on the road between Whitney’s village and Kolda, and some men dressed like cow herders have been hanging around the road not greeting people and generally looking suspicious, so now we do not ride the road alone. Hamidy, Whitney, and I cooked maffe gerte for dinner: peanuts ground into butter boiled with water, salt, red pepper, and mashed up okra, over white rice. Delicious. I have heard that village food is awful, but I enjoyed everything I ate. One of my main reasons for wanting to spend the night was a desire to see the sky in a land far from electric lights. It was cloudy, so I will have to go back. The lightening striking off in the distance, however, was stunning. On Wednesday we went back into the fields to do some weeding. One lucky side affect of the lack of rain is that weeds can’t grow much. The few that are present are rather short. Still, spending a little while bent over weeding a field is enough to instill a new respect for the women for whom this is the way of life. When we came back from the field I went with Whitney to a meeting with two villagers. Whitney has arranged for a doctor a few towns over to sell medication to these women, who in turn sell to the villagers. Last year Whitney helped set up a small store in her village, but because everyone in the village is related in some fashion, and everyone badgered the cashier saying, “we’re family, so you should give me lots of stuff and let me pay later,” the store was never able to afford a second shipment of goods. However, the women in charge of the medicine are collecting money, so they will soon be ordering more supplies. Once they got deep into vocabulary I do not yet know, I started making faces at the kids and soon had a pack trying to make fish lips and cross their eyes.
Whitney learned of a tree that has very nutritious leaves, and she recently did a class on how to cook using these leaves. Other leaves have been less beneficial. About a year ago, a young man invited her over for tea several times. He was a friend, so she came and drank with him each time, and then vomited all night. When she finally connected her puking-boughts to the tea, she and some others questioned the young man. He confessed that he had been putting herbs in her tea to make her like him. The nausea was an unfortunate side affect. The fact that she is still friends with him makes me wonder if the herbs were powerful in the intended sense; although she does not date him, she somehow likes him enough to forgive him for poisoning her.
I spoke, at least briefly, to most of the people in the compound, and they were kind to me with my limited Pulaar. I danced and clowned for them, and when Hamidy put on a tape of Dvorak’s New World Symphony I sang along with it. A woman told us that Whitney speaks better than I do, and I play better than she does. I was pleased, but I know this is in part because while I can freely dance and play the fool, if Whitney did the same she would hear about it for months. During her first week here she did dance a lot, and the discussion of it, joking about it, and requests for more dancing during the months afterwards taught her to be more mild mannered.
The visit was rejuvenating, making me feel new excitement and affection for my surroundings. When it was time to go home, Hamidy sharpened his machete and biked with me back to Kolda.

2006-07-24T12:33:00.000-07:00

I still have no cat in my life, but there are other animals, and kind of a cat.
Jenny raises bunnies to eat. A bit back she had four babies. Recently her hutch broke, so now the young'uns and a few full grown rabbits are free-range in her yard. It feels like Eden to be munching a mango while a handful of fluffy baby bunnies hop around and sniff at me, and I am watching a pair of adult rabbits take turns stealing mango skin from each other. Later on the day I visited Jenny there was a tiny tiny yellow little chick in my yard. No one would tell me why. I held it for a little while. It laid its head down on my palm and closed its eyes. Fluffy sweetheart. I was on my way to work, so I could not dwell long with the chick. I put it down with so much fear that it was resulting in chest pains. Would someone step on it accidentally or squash it intentionally? Later my Neenee told me who the chick belonged to, and I gather it will be well cared for until slaughter day.
Last night I noticed my bedroom smelled like a litterbox. I sniffed around and discovered the smell was coming from my bed. I tentatively lifted my mattress. It appears that one day, not so recently, I jumped onto my bed and took a mouse by terrible surprise. I was able to deal with the dead lizard, but squashed dead fuzzy animals are different. I told my host mom, and she, Omar, and another teenager came into my room. They were pretty nonchalant about the whole thing. When they looked at the mouse they told me not to worry: it's dead. They do not understand me. Live mice run around my room all the time. Aside from their snacking on my garden seeds, I have no gripes with the live mice. It is the dead ones, especially when swung at me, as Omar insisted on doing a couple times before taking it outside, that make me squeal. I was pretty surprised by the hysteria in my voice.
However, it was not the mouse making my room stink. Two nights ago I thought I heard a person walking on my roof. Just that day I had walked on my roof to fix the plastic up there, and as far as I knew the ladder had not been moved from the side of my hut, so it seemed plausible that someone had gone up there for a stroll. I mentioned this to my mom yesterday, and she laughed, promising me it was just a cat; she had heard a pair brawling on her roof the same night. It took me a while, but I finally put it together. The plastic does not completely cover my straw roof. I've gone to sleep in contorted positions to be clear of raindrops. A cat, who did not even give me the satisfaction of a moments petting and affection, indirectly urinated on my bed. And to think, my mother in the US complains about squirrels walking on her solid, perfectly waterproof roof.

2006-07-13T05:57:00.000-07:00

July 11, Tuesday
A pack of men in their early twenties were drumming and singing as they danced down the street, and one man was swinging and tossing a big wooden club, so I followed them. They were wearing green and black striped hooded tops and loose pants with the same pattern. Each one’s outfit was slightly different. Thicker stripes, jagged edges on the stripes, angular stripes, occasional polka-dots. Under the green and black they wore bright colorful patchwork clothing. Around their necks, wrists, and ankles were thick green and black ropes, and photos of their marabout, spiritual leader, hung from their necks and waistes. I have seen these men alone or in pairs before. They sing for a moment, sounding like a chassid belting a nigun, or a wolf trying to turn a howl into a melody, and then they ask for money. Judging by how their eyes gleam, I think they prefer if at first you refuse to donate. These men have none of the usualy shyness and humility of beggars. Rather, they look like street corner con-men taking delight in the banter and wit demanded by their profession. They will try to heckle, bully, and cajole you into donating. I suspect Damon Runyon would have adored them. Between their attractive outfits and the wily, firey gleams in their eyes, they are the most exciting sights on the street.
I have never previously given them money, but because I respected what the man was doing with the club and was enjoying the music, I gave the clubber some change. Once I made this donation, the drummers beckoned me to continue following them. We went down into a grassy field, and the parade ended under a tree beside some weaving machines. (It is a lovely site. The weavers sit in the field working the machines with their feet, tossing the spools of thread back and forth through the looms, watching cows graze.) Here the guys all sat down, and someone tipped a drum on its side so that I would not have to sit in the grass.
They are of the Byfoll (rhymes with hi-doll) sect of Islam. They come from Dakar, and not one of them speaks Pulaar. They all know French, but my French has greatly deteriorated since I started learning Pulaar, so until Abdoulaye introduced himself, my conversations were primarily of gestures and facial expressions. Abdoulaye spent three years living in NYC. He told me the Byfoll believe in forgetting about material things. Instead, they believe people should celebrate life and all the gifts from Allah. He has an infectious smile and a trustworthy, kind face. He gave me two mangos. He told me the Byfolls believe in being kind and honest, taking care of people, and sharing generously. He described the village they set up on the outskirts of Kolda, where it is all peace and love. Excluding the passing reference to self-flagelation, had he and the others been wearing tye-dye instead of the green and black I would have been sure I was at a rainbow gathering. Certainly the smell of what they were smoking would have been appreciated at a rainbow gathering. Abdoulaye told me that their religion prohibits premarital sex, and that they say me not as a female but as a person. It was amazing. This has been the only time since I got to Africa that I have spent time with males without even jokingly being propositioned. Abdoulaye was very positive about me being in Africa. He was excited for me, and all the things that I will see and learn. And he kept telling me that I was lucky to be in Senegal because in Senegal people do not eat people. Through Abdoulaye translating, the club swinger offered to teach me to play the club and to give me a small one of my own.
Naturally, by the time I got home my mother already knew I had been hanging out with the Byfolls. Her face was twisted into a look of horror as she told me I must not talk to the Byfolls because they murder people and they use drugs. As she gestured and ranted about the perils of these happy, musical, and very floppy and high fellows, it was very hard to not laugh. Some friends of mine in the compound agreed that these guys would rob me and then dice me up if given a moment’s chance. They mocked the Byfolls, saying they do not shower and are nothing but a dirty bunch of musicians, not realizing how nice that description would sound to me. Regardless of what I think of their warning, I want to retain my good standing in this community, so I will not pursue a friendship with any Byfolls.
Not so luckily, it turns out that the pack of them is staying in a compound across the street, and all night I have been hearing them singing and drumming. I ache to join them. In California I had friends in a band of Gamilan players. Unique excentric nut jobs, all of them. I have no doubt that mothers have warned their children against my friends. I miss my friends. It sounds as if the Gamilan troup is having a party across the street.

2006-07-13T05:56:00.000-07:00

July 6 Thursday
Today my host mom and I went to Jenabu’s house, where many people from our neighborhood were gathered to celebrate the wedding of Issatou and a man whose name is unknown to everyone I asked. The couple is a little younger than I am. I have seen them a few times being affectionate with each other, so I think this is a chosen, not arranged, marriage. My mother and I went to the part of the yard where elderly women were sitting, and we greeted all of them. Some of these little old ladies giggled at talking to a toubob in Pulaar. When they asked questions beyond my vocabulary, my mother would tell me what to say. After we had completed the greetings, my mom took me to the compound next door, where the girls I am friendly with were cooking. It was a mob scene, with many, many young women pushing their way to the tubs where juice was being made or to the various charcoal stoves holding huge pots of dinner. I could fit easily into one of these pots. Soon I was elbow deep in a tub of bissap leaves and water, squeezing red juice out of the leaves. A thick whitish very sweet drink, made I think from baobab fruit, was also being prepared, and girls often tilted my chin up so they could ladle it into me. Delicous. I helped pound onions with the big mortor and pestle, but after spraying people with onion bits too many times, I was guided back to the juice. And of course, with so many people packed so close, there was a good deal of dancing.
At some cue we all dashed from the cooking area back to the first compound where chairs were set in a circle. The bride was sitting in the circle, and people were dancing for her. She was stunning. Her hair was braided and twisted, and a challah-like bun was placed on her head. Her scalp was painted silver. Her face make-up, particularly that around her eyes, had her looking a fairy-tale witch. And her dress was shimmery and intricate. I was urged to dance and was happy to oblige I frolicked and flopped about like a court jester Every time I wanted to sit down another girl would come to dance with me and urge me to play with her. Men came nowhere near the bride’s circle. They watched the dancing from a distance and refused to participate.
At some other cue everyone suddenly got up to go home. My neighbor took me under her wing and led me back to my house. She told me to bath, and then she came over to choose clothing for me. They have a gentle way here of making me feel slightly like an invalid. Freshened up, we went walking to another house. At this house chairs were set in rows, and we sat and waited for the bride and groom to arrive. The yard was packed. There were probably two hundred chairs, and most of the people who were sitting had someone on their lap, myself included. Behind the chairs there was a mob of people standing. I had not known to bring a gift, so some friends of mine said I could go in on theirs, and they let me be photographed with them and their shiny big bucket full of household items.
When the couple arrived everyone stood to honor them and to see them. I lifted the little girl who was on my lap up onto my shoulders, and was so pleased to have had the arm strength to do this. I shall ever be a fan of pulling water from wells. The wedding couple was flanked by three sets of girls and women in coordinated outfits. They went to a table that was set on a stage and posed for pictures with many people. The table was carefully made up with plastic flowers and bottles of coca-cola and orange fanta. They danced stiffly with their arms around each other for about thirty seconds as the dj played Whitney Houston’s “And I Will Always Love You,” which I think is about a breakup. The dancing reminded me of a wedding I attended in Massechusetts where the bride and groom beamed as they danced slowly through their chosen song. What seemed to me an imitation of a familiar ritual made me so homesick for friends and culture that make sense to me. After the dancing came more posing for photos. We were served popcorn and fried dough, and later we were given sandwiches. A friend opened mine and plucked out the meat. The whole event was videotaped. I have been trying to find out if there has been or will be a wedding ceremony, maybe something in a mosque, but I have not been able to get a clear answer. The community support for the couple and the planning and coordinating that went into the event sung of a great love for the couple and excitement for their life together. Tomorrow the celebrations will continue in the courtyard of the groom’s house, and I hear there will be live drumming for the dancing.

2006-07-13T05:47:00.000-07:00

July 3 About garden work:
Every morning, unless it has rained the night before or looks very much like it will rain before noon, the garden must be watered. Seck usually does this himself. The watering takes a long long time because the water pressure is low, there is only one hose, and this hose is accident prone. It is yellow, and in many places it looks like a peeled banana with the skin hanging off, revealing the black tube underneath. The hose is in many pieces, some of which have a slightly wider diameter than others so the pieces may be plugged in to one another. Chunks of hose lay all over the garden so that one can choose to lengthen the hose in one corner of the garden, and then by reconnecting segments one can reach another corner without ever having had to move the hose very far. If Seck bends the hose slightly, or if in using his thumb to direct the stream of water he puts his thumb too deep into the hose, creating too much pressure, or if the hose just feels like it, a joint will come apart, and Sek will be left staring helplessly at his dry hose, calling to me to find the culprit. As soon as I plug the hose back together, it comes apart at another joint. When I run over to this other joint, one of the scraps of fabric tied to the hose to cover a hole comes loose and a geyser shoots into the air. I try to lay the hose so that joints are either in a garden bed or up hill from some flowers so that escaping water goes to good use.
While Seck is watering I might have him fill the watering can for me so that I can gently give the carrots a drink. I might take cuttings from flowers to plant elsewhere in the garden. If a pepinaire sack has more than one sprout coming up, I will find sacks in which there is no plant or there is a dead plant, and I will give each sprout its own sack. I have transplanted lettuce sprouts into table beds, put young eggplant plants into new beds, crumbled cowpatties, dug beds, mixed dirt with crumbled cow paties, laid plastic in the ground and secured it with rocks to create improved beds, planted seeds, carted dirt, peanut shells, and cowpatties around the garden in the wheelbarrow, applied insecticides, discovered I do not have the will to crush centipeeds, heard Seck bash a snake to death, and, of course, spent lots and lots of time weeding. Come the end of the rainy season we will not have to weed so much, but with the frequent downpoors, every spot of dirt between beds is quick to sprout greenery, and if we do not keep the weeds to a minumum, we will soon have more snakes.
In addition to the usual gardeny work, I have also had the pleasure of chasing goats out of the garden and trying to strengthen our fence against their attacks. I spent one afternoon searching for thorny branches and weaving them into a barrior which I wedged into the fence so that any goat wanting to hop from the cement step and over the fence will get a belly full of gashes. I felt like pond scum when I caught myself admiring my handiwork. I hope the goats will look before they try to leap back into the garden.
As Jenny did before me, I am supposed to manage the finances of the garden. When I arrived the garden had 1,400 cfa and owed roughly 25,000 cfa. The money is owed not to a person, but to an account. Six months ago money was donated to allow someone from Kolda to go to Dakar bring back gardening supplies. If all was fair and honest, the gardeners in Kolda would have paid for these supplies as they used them, putting just enough money in the account to send someone back up to Dakar to buy more tools, seeds, and such. The supplies were kept in a storage room to which Seck and the others had easy access. The storage room is now nearly empty, and the account is as well. Had Jenny not kept close track of his takings there would be no knowing how much we owe. She thinks none of the Senegalese people involved ever saw this as much more than a way to get some things for free, so there will probably be no one coming to the garden to complain about the lack of payment. Still, the debt indicates that the garden is not sustainable as is. When the supplies are gone, if there is no further donation, the garden will be in trouble. This June the garden made 5025 cfa through vegetable and flower sales, 1255 cfa of which goes to the garden. The rest belongs to Seck and his family.I recently collected seeds from basil plants. This was my first time gathering seeds. It adds a sense of eternity to gardening. One of my chief delights each morning is visiting my watermelons. When I tried growing watermelons in Palo Alto I had many flowers and nary a fruit. Now I have three healthy little watermelons that swell more and more each night. I used to have five, but a few days ago I discovered worms eating two of them. Seck’s daughter, Nafi, looked up, concerned, when, upon reaching my watermelon patch, instead of giving my usually gasp of delight I let out an agonized moan. One aspect of the garden that makes no sense to me is the fish heads. Everywhere there are fish heads. I guess some cats drag fish bodies into the garden by night, eat the choicer parts, and scatter the fish heads so they can watch and laugh as I fall over trying to avoid stepping on them. Or perhaps it is one of Seck’s enemies trying to perform a fish-head based black-magic.A few times a week I go to the men sitting outside the agriculture office, shake their hands, and chat with them a bit.
And, thankfully, I have on occasion led visitors through the garden, showing off the improved beds, hammocks, water tables, and other interesting features.
I am posting this on line on Thursday, and today Seck and I spent a long time squatting by one of the carrot beds. A few weeks ago I seeded a second the bed for a second time, but still very few carrots have sprouted. Seck thinks this might be because of a slightly hard layer of dirt and mold that is developing like a green skin on top of the plot. Using small twigs we made incisions and painstakingly peeled back the skin.

2006-07-13T05:31:00.001-07:00

July 2 Sunday
Today I officially joined the Bantingel women’s group. To celebrate the occasion, my mother lent me a Senegalese outfit. The walk from our house to the home of the woman hosting the meeting felt like two blocks of going down a runway. People came out of their houses to see me model the clothing, and they cheered for me. The kids recently taught me Wolof words that I think basically translate to, “cool!” so I asked everyone if I looked cool. Each time I said it I won big belly laughs and the assurance that I looked cool. (I just spent a while trying to post photos with this entry, to no avail. If you know any tricks for making blogger.com cooperate, please tell me.)
This is the form of the meetings: We go to the home of the woman who won the lottery the prior Sunday. She has chairs or benches set up in a circle for us. There are about 25-35 women at each meeting. Her children make tea for us. Tea here is a highly sugared delicious hot drink, served in a tiny cup with a lot of foam. You are supposed to slurp it, leaving the foam, and quickly return the cup so the next person can be served. Women put money on a tray, and each contribution is recorded in a notebook. Women talk and joke with one another, and if there is music, I am urged to dance. (I really wish I had taken belly dancing lessons before coming here.) When the money collection is finished, a slip of paper is drawn from a handful of paper. The woman whose name is chosen will host the gathering and receive the pot next week. And until every other woman has had a turn at winning, her name will be excluded from the pot. Then the hostess’ children bring out a bucket of water for hand washing and three or four bowls of rice with red oil and a green mixture that looks like guacamole. We eat. At home I use a spoon, as does most of my family. The first time I came to the women’s meeting I was offered a spoon, but seeing it would be the only spoon at the bowl, I refused. At first I was awful at eating with my hand. I could not force the food into a ball. Rice would squeeze out between my fingers. The green substance would squish down my arm. I would get food all over my face and pants. Today women at other bowls took a special interest in the fact that I was finally successfully eating with my hand. As they supportingly laughed at the sight of their toubob, I raised my oily, red, rice speckled fist in triumph, unintentionally imitating the black power fist. After we eat, two buckets of water are brought to us for a two-step hand washing. We are then served small plastic bags of bissap juice. Everyone bites a corner of their bag to suck out the juice, then drops the bag on the ground. Immediately after the juice the meeting is over and the yard suddenly empties.
In order to join the group now, eight weeks into the current lottery session, I had to give the women a large sum of money to make up for the weeks I had missed. We were warned many times during training that people would see us as cash machines. We were told to never lend money that we were not willing to lose. We were told that even close friends would try to get money from us. But I like these women and think that they will not cheat me. And further, I think that if they tried to, my host mother would not allow it.
I have given my host money to buy me two outfits. She suggested I do this, saying that she would be able to get far better prices than could I. This is absolutely true, but I told her I wanted to pick the fabrics. She laughed, told me that from my clothing and my decorations she knows what colors I like, and proceeded to tell me precisely what I like. It is a simple thing, and it arguably would have been difficult for her not to notice my three tye-dyed door curtains and bright clothing, but still I was touched that she had observed my taste. She recently showed me the fabric she chose. It is awfully nice, but it is only enough for one outfit. It is a thin material, so it needed more fabric to go underneath. I gave her more money, and ultimately the one outfit has wound up costing me more than twice what she said I would have to pay for two. I have bought a little fabric on my own. I have no doubt she paid less than I would have paid, but I am positive that I am paying dearly for the privilege of not being cheated by a fabric vendor.

2006-07-13T05:31:00.000-07:00

July 1 Saturday
This evening France beat Brazil, 1-0, in the quarter finals of the World Cup. The boys who live in my compound, and most of the others who had come to watch the game, are avid fans of Brazil. Many people in Senegal, including Seck, my man at the garden, say that truly Brazil is their team. People here had so much faith in Brazil that I assumed they could not lose. Usually, by the last five minutes of a game, if the score is not tied, the boys are discussing the game in the past tense. Tonight, up until the very last seconds of the game, the boys in my compound were leaning forwards, clenching their fists, and staring pleadingly at the television.
Their expressions turned to misery and disbelief when the French players began hugging one another on the field. My mom and a few boys joined voices we could hear in other compounds, whooping in joy at the victory. Had there been a respectful silence after the game I think the boys would have been able to handle the loss with dignity, but the loud celebrations and the taunts from the France supporters, were too much for boys who had been fiercely pulling for the team ever since the World Cup began. Omar stormed into the house to be alone, and in the process he ripped the TV’s cord out of the wall. My mom snapped into fury. She chased after him. Through the window’s bars I saw her swing at him (he ducked, and I don’t think she really meant for the punch to land) as she yelled at him, calling him a fool and saying that his father had not bought the TV. (I was so pleased to be able to understand!) After she left Omar, muttering in anger and disgust, I went to the window and tried to reach out to him by softly making the wierd chirping hiccoughing sounds he likes to make at me, but he gave no answer. When he came out shortly afterwards his eyes were swollen from crying. He sat off from the group and cradled his head in his hands for a little while. I wonder what was hurt most at that point - losing the game, acting foolishly, or being publicly chastised for it.
In the twenty minutes that followed at least three pairs of boys come to blows. After my mom broke up a fight (she is tough!) and saw that one boy had blood dribbling out of his nose, she shooed the remainder out of the compound and spoke to them in front of our wall. Again, I was thrilled to understand what she said to them, but the content of her speech, and the fact that the fighting and blood did not upset her nearly as much as did the violence against her television, surprised me. She told the boys, all of whom remained quiet and attentive throughout her speach, that they should be supporting France, not Brazil. She said nothing about punching friends over a game played on another continent. She argued that because Brazil had beaten and eliminated Ghana, and Ghana had represented all of Africa, they should root against Brazil, and because France had colonized Senegal, they should cheer for France. She did not focus on the fact that the group of boys all speak French, but just that their land was colonized by France. This is a common argument in support of France. As my language improves I hope to better understand the local sentiment on France. I wonder if tonight’s events in my compound are indicative of riots taking place around the world.

2006-07-13T05:29:00.000-07:00

June 30 Friday
An hour before dusk on Thursday I set off on my bike with one empty plastic bag, an idea that I’d seen cows grazing in a nearby field, and a mental image of a beautiful, well fertilized garden to call my own. I pedaled to the field and lay my bike in the grass. Instantly, as usual when I am anywhere near my house, some girls called my name and asked what I was doing. At first they seemed to think I was mispronouncing the word, but when I did a charade of how cow-patties are made and explained why I wanted to find some, they volunteered to help. The girls were better than I at sighting the cow-patties, but I had to do the picking-up. Thankfully, I am told that fresh cow droppings are too powerful to mix directly in dirt in any large dose, so I was able to avoid the soft, hot, fly-covered cakes and only take the hardened pieces.
While we four were bent over the field, Malik, a friend of my family’s, joined us and helped in the hunt. We were not finding a lot, so Malik suggested we relocate to another field that he knew was frequented by cows. As we walked to the field, the conversation went from the usual topics of the sun being hot and hair-braiding hurting to the use of drugs in Senegal. It is very minimal, I am told, because Islam forbids it and because most people think drugs are very mysterious and evil. Even marijuana is discussed in a hushed, horrified tone of voice. From drugs we went to Islam, to Judaism, to the religious populations in the USA, to New Orleans, to Katrina, to Weston volunteering there, to Malik telling me he would pray for Allah to bless Weston, to the way the US government in handling the aftermath of Katrina. Such a pleasure to stray from my normal conversations. My Pulaar vocabulary is growing.
Today I broke ground in my backyard and mixed crumbled cow-patties with water and sand. With the help of some of the children in my compound, I filled pepinaires with dirt and seeds. My host mom found an old wooden something that is now our pepinaire table. Aliu, a twelve year old boy, lit up when he saw the pictures on my flower seed packets. These packets were sent from the USA to a prior volunteer. They are old, and they were not prepared for our kind of weather, but Seck took these seeds to a friend of his who specializes in flowers, and his friend thought they would all work here. I let Aliu choose a packet, and he very carefully broke up some ground, planted, and watered. Then he pulled me over to show off his work.
So far we have marigold, lettuce, cucumber, and tomato seeds in the pepinaires. I plan to do direct seeding with carrots, watermelon, okra, and follere. (I don’t know the English word for follere.) I have visions of a wonderland of color and vegetables in my backyard accompanying a sea of flowers blooming all over the compound.

2006-07-13T05:28:00.000-07:00

June 29
Today Jenny and I rode 25 km out of town and then back. Along the way we stopped at a tiny village where Khadjitou, who lived with me and I used to think was my sister, lives with her family during the summer. She was amazed to see us, and seemed really happy to have me there to show around. I told her that now that she is no longer there in the morning to be my mirror, I always go to work with sunscreen in streaks on my face and with my clothing inside-out and dirty. She told me she thinks of me when she eats mangos. A simple yet fond friendship.
This was my first time in a little village in the middle of nowhere, and I am infatuated. It has no electricity, running water, cars, and virtually no people. It has lots of sheep, goats, chickens, and cows. Imagine the sounds. The village consists of three clusterings of huts, with about five huts per cluster. Each cluster is about a half kilometer apart. The clusters are surrounded by fields beyond which are walls of trees. This makes visible a wide expanse of sky above and a wide expanse of green below. The village has one kitten, now named Babaganoosh. She was scared when I first held her, but she learned to trust me and was soon sitting in my lap of her own volition, purring. I hope I can teach the kids of the village to touch her gently and to stop picking her up by the tail or the head. The village smells green, fresh, and clean. The cooking hut, in which many vegetables hang drying, smells like years of sauteing onions. As we walked through the woods between hut clusters, the pack of children followed at a slight distance and called me by my name, rather than calling me, “toubob.” They giggled when I shook their hands. The adults gave me a sack full of mangos. The village is 12 kilometers from home. I plan to return frequently, preferably just to sit and soak it in.

2006-07-13T05:25:00.000-07:00

June 24 Saturday
Today I went to my first Peace Corps Girls Club meeting. Each of the six volunteers in attendance brought a girl age eight through twelve. When I told Neenee, my host mom, that I needed a girl, she suggested I go to some neighbors whom I often visit and ask if I might borrow their daughter, Jenabu, for the day. Jenabu’s parents were happy to oblige. When I went to pick her up this morning she was dressed better than I, wearing jeans embroiedered with flowers, a red blouse, and high heels. She was carrying a freshly pressed handkerchief. Even in a clean and ironed skirt and button down shirt I feel like a shlub next to the women of Senegal.
Jenabu smiled at me as if I was Santa Claus. It feels terrific to get such a reception from a cute ten year old. We had a fifteen minute walk to the regional house, and she held my hand through most of it. When I admitted I was lost, she gallently led the way and never seemed to fault me for the detour.
Jenny was already at the house with her girl. They had set up crayons and paper, so the four of us drew our houses and families until the others arrived. I focused on the house part of my drawing because I really do not know who is in my family. When all the girls and volunteers were finally at the house, Whitney served hot milk and bread. I took Jenabu to the house’s swing and pushed her and twisted her up in it. Then we all played frisbee.
The featured part of the club’s meeting was a short discussion on malaria, what causes it, who is most vulnerable to it, and how to avoid it. Allison found a small puddle of standing water, and as if it had been planted there specifically to be Exhibit A, it was rife with young swimming mosquitos. This was my first time seeing the babies. Yuck. The girls were shy about volunteering to answer questions, but when I whispered answers to Jenabu and then elbowed her in the ribs she was good about raising her hand. After the educational segment, the group made a moisturizing lotion out of household goods, and then the girls flipped through the house’s National Geographic and People magazines, drew, played on the swing, and made friends with each other. Every ten minutes or so Jenabu would catch my eye and flash me a huge smile.
As people began to go home, Jenabu told me she wanted to bath. She seemed clean enough to me, but I guess she wanted to smell fresh when she got home. After she took a shower and everyone else left, we played a few games of checkers. On our walk back to her house, as usual, people hollered, “Toubob!” at me. This lovely little girl squeezed my hand and called back, “My name is Jenabu, not Toubob!”

2006-06-25T06:14:00.000-07:00

The peaceful woodsy song of crickets is rather like a chainsaw in an echo chamber when it is being belted out by the choir that moved into my hut. Crickets are everywhere. I do not want to step on them, but I cannot fly. I wear shoes at all times so that I will not feel them when they shatter. They nap in my toilet hole and spring to life when I appear. I can not roll over in bed without being stabbed by a severed leg. I never find the rest of their corpses, only their sharp pointy legs. Do they grow wings? Last night one hopped into my pajamas to wake me. After I finally pushed it out, I underestimated how close it was; when I let my hand fall back down on my matress I heard the poor thing crunch. As I was playing a Bach Partita today, with one sitting on my shoulder and another creeping up my calf, I went cross-eyed watching a cricket amble across my violin.

2006-06-19T05:13:00.000-07:00

I let Salimatou braid my hair a second time. The first time she simply did two french braids. This time, without warning me, she did about ten braids. Compared to some heads this is very few, but it is far more than mine has ever known, and it hurt. The braiding itself was not too bad, but having my hair continually pulled by the braids for the next few days, having the braids, which were thin ropes studded with the thorns of the ends of my hair, hit my neck, and sleeping on the lumps of braids, hurt. Everyone here tells me I am wrong; braids do not hurt. So I can do nothing but agree with them and explain it's not me but my scalp, and because my scalp does not speak Pulaar, it cannot be convinced otherwise. Salimatou was offended when I took out the braids after only two days.

Today I took Jenny to the house of Jenabu Balde. I met Jenabu weeks ago while I was biking hope and greeting people. Because we have the same name she took me to her house to meet her family and give me mangos. She told me she has a women's group that wants help with their garden, so I promised her I would bring Jenny by once Jenny returned from Dakar. (She had her annual dental appointment. After a year of mangos she had no cavities. But then, she only has 3 cavities to begin with, a far cry from my mouth; I lost count at 16. Still, it is a good sign.) I felt lousy about saying I was in Kolda do do ag work but could not help her, and while Iknew someone who could, this person would not appear for a couple weeks. At this point I lack the language to give garden advice, and I am supposed to spend my first year primarily in the garden with Sek. Jenny is going to spend this year doing extension work, so it seemed like a good match. Jenabu's son led us out to the garden, which is a large plot of land speckled with fruit trees and with a pump well. The women Jenny spoke with at the house said that their primary problem is their age. The group is old. Their legs hurt. I don't think Jenny will get much work done with this group, but knowing of their existence will help her other project: data gathering. Jenny is planning to assemble a list of all the women's groups in Kolda, complete with information about their resources, skills, experience, and needs, so that future urban ag volunteers, most immediately, me, will be able to know who to approach, who has a history of working hard, who needs advice, who knows how to do what, and so on. Eventually it would be ideal if we could give the list back to the groups and say, "If you contact the groups on this list you will find all the information and support you could ever want concerning gardening in Kolda."

Senegal seems to want me to have a pet. Yesterday Jenny killed one of her rabbits to make room for the four new babies. She will kill another two very soon, but has let me know I can buy their freedom if I like, or I can adopt one of the babies when it is old enough. Yesterday I saw a cat walking in the sand. Full of hope, I hopped off my bike and tried to lure the cat to me. No dice. The cat ran away. As I began to pedal home, a cluster of women who had watched me be rejected called to me. They said the cat is named Moose, and is usually nice to people. So I hollered "Moose! Aru!" telling him to come. I guess the women don't much talk to their cats, for they burst into laughter every time I called him. He consistantly ignored me, so I tried stalking him with a dramatic tip-toe hopping step, which earned me a whithering look from Moose but cheers from the women. Then, they told me they have a very pregnant cat and want to give me a kitten. I can not give an animal the kind of long term care and safety I would like to give a pet, and I do not want any more responsibility than taking care of myself and my toilet hole, but it would be so nice to have a furry companion.

2006-06-19T04:03:00.000-07:00

June 17, Friday
Yesterday Jenny and I biked to Guinea-Bissau. The above pictures are from the trip. She thinks the ride is about 35 km each way, but it is hard to be sure; every person we asked had a different estimate for the distance between Kolda and the border, ranging from 15 km to 45 km. The road, in its good moments, resembled the back of a Nestle’s Crunch bar. The road is made of red packed dirt, big puddles we had to bike around, and far too many rocks of all sizes. Most of the ride was painless, but by the time I collapsed into bed yesterday afternoon everything that can ache from a bike ride was aching. However, it was a glorious ride. As we progressed south the scenery grew more green and lush. We passed many tiny villages, each of which looked like a cluster of maybe thirty huts. We greeted people in every village. Jenny says it is a safety measure. If anything was to happen to us, from an offensive person to a sudden cloudburst, we could return to one of those villages, and because we had greeted them the people would most likely welcome us like family. (There used to be a volunteer in Senegal who would simply bike until she was tired and then go to the nearest village for food and a place to sleep. I hear she always found warm welcomes.) Also, it is really fun to speak Pulaar to people who are stunned to find white people speaking their language. We met a traveling salesman who was going to the villages with a huge cage of clothing, shoes, and cds tied to his bike. We came across a grove of giant palm trees and calf high black toadstools that were made by termites. This field looked prehistoric. I missed paved roads, where I can balance without using the handlebars, and sit up straight in a position that leaves my lower back and arms free from any discomfort, but much of Senegal has roads like the one we took, so I hope in time to grow used to the bumpiness.

Today I did not so much as touch my bicycle. I walked to work, and everyone who knew me asked what was wrong with my bike. After lunch I was craving a mango, and no one in my house had any, so I grabbed Khadjitou, who I think in fact is not my sister or niece, but I’m still not sure, and said we should walk to market to buy mangos. She agreed, but insisted we wait and rest first. When she was rested she roused me from my reading, and we began the walk. We were instantly joined by two other girls. Leaving the immediate neighborhood took a long time because we had to greet everyone and tell them where we were going. Once we got outside the neighborhood things did not speed up. The girls drag their feet as if that could possibly prevent them from getting drenched in sweat. They kept complaining about my pace, and they started holding my hand or the back of my shirt to keep me in check. Any time someone spoke to us in Pulaar, even if I understood the person my girls would try to translate for me - into Pulaar. They seemed to view me as a rambunctious pet dog. So, I played the part. Every time I saw a pretty field, a path leading into a woods, or a climbable tree, I would aim for it, and the three girls would have to pull on me, leaning and throwing their full weights into the effort of keeping their wandering toubob on track. They humored me to a degree, letting me choose to cross the Casamance River using an informal bridge that is a string of old car and truck tires lying in the muck. At the market the girls bargained and haggled like pros, getting many more mangos for the cfa than I ever could. Walking home, faces dripping mango juice, the girls tried to teach me a song in Pulaar.

2006-06-19T03:34:00.000-07:00

June 8, Thursday
I have a hard time remembering to take my larium on Wednesdays. I really really do not want to get malaria, but ever since I got to Kolda I have been thinking of larium on Tuesdays, forgetting on Wednesdays, and dosing on Thursdays or Fridays. So, a small favor, please. If you find yourself calling or e-mailing me on a Wednesday, please remind me to take my pill. It is often an unpleasant little pill. I do not get the vivid dreams some people experience, but the pill sits in my chest dissolving very slowly, inspiring burps and the occasional shadow of nausea. But I’ve no doubt it’s worth it.
Today my host mom orchestrated the water-proofing of my hut. She began while I was at the garden. I came home to the sight of her dressed in an outfit usually reserved for trips into town, hollering like a construction-site-foreman at the troop of neighborhood teenagers tying sheets of plastic to my roof (see photo). They bounced around on my straw and bamboo for a few hours, during which the falling straw, bamboo, and cement (from where the ceiling rests on my walls), kept me outside, watching the boys and calling up my thanks. They would not let me help.
When the job was done, I had the task of cleaning my hut. Brooms here are so many pieces of long hard straw tied together in a pack. There is no broom handle. You are to bend over so that your hand is nearly on the floor, and sweep with the side of the broom, using the length of the straw rather than just the tips. This is hard on the back, and when I realized the family had an american broom I grabbed it. But what do I know. The american broom moved the cement chunks and most of the straw, but it did nothing but trace lines in the dust that had fallen. My family laughed when I returned the handled broom and bent over to sweep like a Senegalese woman.
In moving my suitcases and trunks I think I killed a lizard. I regret that I did not think to photograph my victim. Immediately after I slid my trunk from my bedroom to my backroom I saw the lizard on the floor in the doorway. Maybe it crawled into my room dying. I’ll never know. It wagged its tail slowly, then more slowly, and then it stopped, and I gave off a most foul eulogy. Why couldn’t it have used those last bits of energy for running outside rather than waving its tail in the wind? Later, when my Pulaar is up to snuff, I will inquire after the black magic meanings behind dead and dying lizards in doorways. I know eggs in that spot are unlucky. I wanted to walk away from it and let one of my mice, or maybe a team of ants, carry it away, but I was too worried that my guests would fail me, I would forget about the lizard, and while trotting off to floss I’d squish the lizard, making it so much more unpleasant to deal with than it already was. I wanted someone else to deal with the corpse, but after the way my family has been mimicking my diarrhea and my dancing, I thought it best to not let them know I have a weak spot for dead lizards.
The first few times I tried pushing it onto my slab of cardboard I had to stop as soon as I felt its body’s weight, because I am much more squeemish than I ever realized. I think there was red goo coming out of its right eye and maybe its chin, but as soon as I got a glimpse of that I resolved to look only at the torso. Eventually I got the lizard outside and into the garbage can. Yesterday I had a red stain on my finger from a fruit drink mix I was using in my water to hide the taste of the rehydration salts. My sister spotted it as soon as I stepped out of my hut, and she took me to task for not inviting her to have a drink. Yet no one said a peep about their toubob carting around a dead lizard. I sang a little as I dropped it in the garbage can, so as not to hear its body make a thump. I really like the lizards here. They are to Senegal like squirrels are to the USA. Often they are yellow and blue. If I had to kill something, I wish it had been a cockroach.

2006-06-19T03:08:00.000-07:00

June 5, Monday
The computers at the internet cafe all have French keyboards. The main differences for me lie in the placement of the A, M, W, and punctuation marks. I type most of these entries from home, and it is in typing on my american laptop that I realize how well I have adapted to the new keyboard layout. Thankfully, both the French and the English put their delete buttons in the same place.
Yesterday I had my first good bout of sickness in Senegal. I had been dreading it. It began in the morning with a stomach ache and an unusually keen desire to stay in bed. By the time I reached the garden it had matured into a pain that kept me from wanting to stand up straight. After stumbling around the garden for about thirty minutes, I reasoned that Sek would respect me more if he knew I had come to work when sick than if he just thought I was being remarkably lazy, so I told him I felt horrible and was going home. I then biked to the regional house, acutely aware of each pothole and each minor lump in the sand. I spent the day curled up on one bed or another, reading, wishing I could sleep, and crawling to and from the sit down toilet. Other than breakfast, I could not eat anything yesterday. This turned out to be a blessing; when the puking began I was very glad to have only liquid in my belly.
There were three other volunteers coming in and out of the house, and they were kind to me, bringing me cold drinks and oral rehydration salts, and distracting me with conversation and Scrabble.
After the sun set and I still felt too sick to bike home, I called my host mom to say I would be spending the night at the regional house. Successfully conducting that conversation without my usual crutch of charades was the highlight of my day. She wished me well and told me to come home in the morning. About an hour later, as I was walking outside to go to the kitchen where I thought I would find the key for the house medicine cabinet, she appeared in the yard. She had had a neighbor accompany her to the regional house so that she could see me. Sweet woman. I am liking her more all the time.
In the night I got sulfuric tasting burps, spent much of the time I could not spend sleeping praying, and now feel better. May all my sicknesses be so easy. I still have not eaten anything, and I am feeling clean and healthy. In the strange world of Senegal, which feels even more odd than usual, having spent the past day in the company of toubobs and deep in two novels, it almost seems possible that I should be able to pass two years without eating. What a pleasure it would be to avoid eating traces of animals, amoebas, parasites, and grease, and just maintain this clear present feeling. But my host mom has some bread and butter for me, and as soon as I finish typing I suspect I will wolf it down.

2006-06-07T05:05:00.000-07:00

June 3
Last night was the first big rain. Today at the beginning of the brutally hot part of the day the air became alive with tiny flying insects. This will sound like an exaggeration, but a modest estimate would be to say no bug was ever more than four inches from its nearest neighbor on each side. Thankfully, they were a sun-loving bunch, so the air under the shade structure was free. I sat there cheering for the lizards who had come out in force to enjoy the easy hunting. About two hours after the bugs appeared they lost their wings, or, more accurately, dropped them in a pile outside my door, and became ugly crawling creatures who apparently wished to drown in my toilet and in my water bucket. I refilled my bucket many times today because I could not bare to wipe myself with a handful of wet carcasses. I could not go so far as to intentionally step on any of the not-yet-drowned bugs, but I took delight in choosing to look anywhere but the floor as I walked. Usually if I see a bug floundering in water I lift it out and try to blow-dry it with my breath. Today I found myself looking at a bug waist-deep in a puddle and actually hoping I would have the privilege of watching it die. I heard Peace Corps would change me, but I did not expect this. They were not a biting bunch, and they showed no predilection for crawling on me, as did the city of ants I found one morning in my bathroom. Their abundance during their flying phase encouraged me to breath through my nose rather than mouth, and my dentist says that is better for my teeth. Yet still, I hope any eggs they laid are being discovered and destroyed. I see seven lifeless bugs on my bed, and two on my knee.
The rain was incredible. First came the lightening. Huge portions of the sky burst into light for split seconds, illuminating the variety of clouds. Occasionally I saw a lightening bolt, but mostly it was sudden flickerings of a broad bright light. It was beautiful, and I stood gazing at the sky for a long time. I was surprised that no one seemed to understand why I was so infatuated by the light show. People kept urging me to go inside. When the rain became more than a drizzle I reluctantly joined my family in their living room. Their house has a corrugated metal roof. A sprinkling of rain on a roof like that sounds like a storm. Last night we could not hear each other’s yells beyond a distance of three feet. The rain did not fall so much as pummel.
After it had been pouring for a little while, my mother suddenly thought of my straw covered hut. We ran the ten feet from her door to mine, arriving soaked, to find one side of my bed was in a puddle, my books were wet, and my living room had a small pond. The family came to help mop up the water and move all my things into a dry corner. Earlier yesterday I had refused to tell my mother the cost of my furniture, and this had made her quite angry. Our very next interaction found her choosing to be on her knees scrubbing a rag on my floor to absorb the water. I was so grateful to her and my family for how they took care of me and my things. Today another relative and I walked to the market to buy plastic, and tomorrow someone will help me waterproof my hut. This evening, as a token of my gratitude, I finally let the girls braid my hair. Ever since I moved here I have been telling them they could have a go at my head tomorrow. They were stunned when I finally said today might be nice. It hurt, as I expected, and I was disappointed to find that when I turned my gasps of pain into cries of, “mangooooo,” no one brought me a mango. But the folks gathered to watch the evening’s soap opera, “Passions,” cheered for me and Salimatou, my stylist, when she finished, and I rather like how the braids look.

2006-06-07T04:58:00.000-07:00

June 2
Two days ago I saw someone passing the garden with a kora, a big guitar-like instrument. I stopped him, got a short concert out of him, told him I play violin, and got a date for yesterday morning. The kora player showed up at the garden with two other musicians as I was finishing the morning’s work. We sat on the trunk of a fallen tree, and they took turns on the kora while I played violin. They taught me one piece and I improvised through a few others. As planned, they returned in the afternoon as I was finishing work, and we went to the house of the guy from whom Jenny and I are buying drums. We worked on the piece they had taught me, and we started a few other Senegalese songs. I tried to teach them a Turkish melody and then an Irish jig, but I was disappointed by their inability to grasp the melodies.
Today one of the musicians came to my house. I guess I had mentioned my neighborhood's name, and once in the area he had only to ask people where the toubob lives. I tried to make my sister greet him so that I could learn his name, but she did not understand my need and only gave him a curt couple of questions. I thought it creepy that he had sought and found my home. He had little to say, and when he did speak his words were very quiet and hard to understand. I refused to make much effort for him, so we sat in silence as I ate a mango. He was mad that I had not been at the garden when he arrived this morning, and he wanted me to come to his house to play music. When he told me he was angry I could not help but laugh at how absurd it was that someone I had met only two days before should sound so severely betrayed. He must have realized he was being silly; the righteously angry expression on his face broke off into sheepish laughter. Eventually he got up to leave, and when I showed no sign of joining him he looked genuinely surprised. I tried to gently explain that his visit to the garden this morning and his anger about my absence were the result of a misunderstanding that was rooted in my poor language skills, and therefore we should avoid further trouble by postponing music-making until I speak better Pulaar. He said he did not understand. My mother, who had been sitting with us for the whole visit, said a brief something to him, and he scurried off. My mother then told me that I am welcome to say she threatened to beat me if I go to his house, but that he may come to ours. I was quite touched by her suggesting I use her as an excuse to keep myself safe, and it pleased me that her thinking was so similar to that of my real mother.

2006-06-03T12:39:00.000-07:00

June 1
Yesterday I got myself a beans sandwich and a glass of tea for breakfast. The tea is pink, with foam on top, and it tastes like a hot milkshake. Delicious. It was my first time going to a beanlady alone. I was so pleased to have eaten out on my own.
Beanladies are wonderful women. They are all over the place, and a delicious and cheap source of food. This is sort of like describing how going to a gas station works, but my mom found it interesting, so here is a description.
A bean sandwich costs 100 cfa. For some perspective, sending a letter to the US costs 550 or 650 cfa. Beanladies are in cities across Senegal. Each sits in a small square tent with a table in the center and wooden benches around it. On the table are her beans, bread, knife, pepper, cups, and maybe a bowel of meat. She usually has tappalappa (the local bread) and a white bread. Both are shaped like long thing baguettes. She cuts a piece about the length of my forearm and smears a generous amount of a bean and onion mix inside. She has black pepper, hot red pepper, and sometimes mayonaise that can be added. I have been advised to stay away from the mayo, at least until I think I already have ameoabas. She gives you the sandwich wrapped in newspaper. You sit on your bench and chat or don't chat with the other customers until you are finished. Then you pay, crumple your newspaper, and drop it on the ground. It is hard to get used to the fact that the land here is viewed as one endless garbage can. While morally it feels lousy to toss things by the side of the road, it is awfully convenient to be able to fling away banana peels and other trash. If I ever decide to stop having both lunch and dinner with my family, I think I will become close friends with a beanlady.
Family meals - These are usually pretty tasty. Some sauce, a few vegetables, and a bed of rice or millet. If the family is having chunks of meat they make me a seperate plate. Today I helped with the green sauce and discovered that ground up dried fish goes into even the most vegan-looking dishes. I shall try to focus on the taste. If I am sitting with them we all crowd around one bowl. Most of us use spoons. There is usually little to no discussion. Some of us sit just above the ground on low wooden stools, and the rest squat. Meals are late. Lunch is around two, which is long after my eight o'clock breakfast. Dinner is around ten. Once Peace Corps sends me a refrigerator I might opt out of the family dinners in favor of having time to digest before going to sleep.
The man who is making my furniture made his first bamboo hula-hoop last week. He thought it an odd concept, but he made it very well and gave it to me for free. I think the spectacle of me giving it a test run outside his shop paid for the circle.

2006-05-28T04:37:00.000-07:00

Photos!
Go to the following link to see an assortment of images from Thies and Kolda. I think one of the following links should work. Please let me know if neither do. The photos are in alphabetical order.
http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?&conn_speed=1&collid=52668302808.13585867908.1148820100389&mode=fromsite

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLandingSignin.jsp?Uc=o71cijc.68ooaro&Uy=nys30x&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=0

2006-05-24T12:18:00.000-07:00

I am sure I mispronounce many words, but my family has taken delight in correcting me on two in particular. At the end of every meal, completely regardless of how much I have eaten, as soon as I put down my spoon or otherwise indicate that I am done everyone at the bowl yells "eat!" It is as if I am a conductor giving a cue to a well trained choir. I have been responding, "mi haddi." That is what it sounded like everyone else was saying when they are full. No, they have been saying "mi harri," and I have been concluding each meal by announcing that I am circumcised. My second colorful error has been saying, "I soiled my pants," when I intended to say, "I need."
My family and neighborhood does indeed speak Pulafuta. They can understand Fulakunda, but I can barely understand Pulafuta, so it is problematic. I hear the occasional familiar word, but by and large it sounds like they have mouthfuls of marbles. I am really frustrated to be so much more bewildered all the time than I feel I should be, but I am growing resigned to it. I'll probably leave here with my own personal blend of the two dialects, and, inchallah, the ability to understand both.
Last night was the first proper rain. At the pitter patter and the smell of it I ran outside and danced, leapt, spun in it until I was cold. I don't know why it was so intoxicating, but I felt like a gleeful toddler. As usual, my family looked on, bewildered by their toubob. Later, after the rain stopped, a group of girls gathered and, as has become a favored past-time, urged me to dance. I am terrible at their graceful moves, I do not understand the beats of their music, and I have such lousy control of my hip and tush-shaking that their three year old boys look like Micheal Jackson in comparison. We stood in a circle making vocal and clapping beats, and I did my best to mimic their moves. Oh do we laugh. And sweat runs down my body in full sheets.

Because

Because of the rain, Sek called me this morning to say he would not go into the garden until the afternoon. So I read in bed, did yoga while listening to the bbc, studied, and talked to my family. In the afternoon I biked to the garden to join him for the afternoon watering. I found his daughter and two of her friends, sent in his stead because he is sick. Yesterday he told me very seriously that he is afraid of Jenny. He says she is dangerous. I tried to discern more, but all I could gather was that she is taking advantage of the fact that he is an old sick man. No doubt she is being held responsible for today's absence. I wonder if he will fear me too. Watering with the girls was fun. I got to practice my Pulaar, and we took turns climbing the garden's big tree. The heights they reached, and barefoot no less, put me to shame. I am worried about my role in the garden, my relationship with Sek, and the success of the garden as a demo-site. Sek has actively discouraged people from visiting, he holds no classes, and he is looking forward to moving to Dakar. As an urban aggie I am supposed to be helping folks who will in turn pass the info on to other gardeners. We shall see.

2006-05-22T03:47:00.000-07:00

May 18
My family’s well is a long round hole topped with four walls of hip-height cement starting at the ground level. A rope is tied to a low branch of the mango tree above the well. At the other end of the rope is a thick rubber bag. When I want water I drop the bag into the well and watch the long rope follow. Then I pull the rope a few times, and on each fall the bag goes deeper into the water. When I think the bag has no floating left to it, I tug it back up. The first time I did this I was pretty surprised by how heavy the bag becomes. After just a few tries it’s become if not easy, than at least a fun chore. Every time I’ve gone to draw water I have walked smack into a branch. I hope I learn to duck.
I’ve filled my bucket with water about four times. Most of this has been for drinking, but some for showering and washing my toilet. My toilet is the standard squatter, described earlier. It is my hut’s only connection to plumbing, so it shall be my sink, shower, and toilet. If my first priority is to keep hydrated, my second it to keep this douche clean. My first shower was fun. My prior bucket baths have been in a shower room where all the floor tilted towards the drain. Today I tried standing on my toilet, but I kept slipping, so I got my laundry bucket and stood in that as I scooped water onto me. I created a puddle and splashed the walls a good deal.
My hut: It is a palace. It has a big bedroom and living room, a small front storage space, and a back-room / bathroom. The round ceiling is made of bambo and straw and has concentric circles that I often stare into. My hut stays cool for most of the day. The walls are slightly lumpy cement, and they go about seven feet high before giving way to open space. I climbed up onto and shimmied across the tops of my walls today to tie strings for hanging my mosquito net.
Mangos. Delicious luscious juicy beautiful plentiful mangos. I lost count of how many I have eaten today. Most trees here have mangos, and everyone is generous with their mangos. Sitting with a bunch of Pulaar speakers on a mat in the sand with kids playing nearbyand tall trees heavy with mangos as far as the eye can see, hearing the crazy beats of Senegalese music is glorious.

2006-05-22T03:44:00.000-07:00

May 16
Sunday morning at the crack of dawn all the volunteers who were staying at the center in Thies woke and started running around saying goodbyes and loading our things into the sept-places (taxis with seven seats). My favorite goodbye was with Justin, who, when I thought he was going to give me a high-five, swooped me up and ran around carrying me, hollering like a nut-case.
Nick took the front seat of the sept-place, leaving me the three seats in the second row, so it was a quite comfortable ride. I read, studied Pulaar, slept, talked with Nick, and stared out the window watching the lanscape grow lush. The ride was uneventful until Habib, our driver, pulled over at the Gambian border control. Peace Corps has made a big deal about Administrative Seperation swiftly following any unapproved entrance into another country, but it appeared Habib had not heard. Nick, not expecting to leave Senegal before we return to Thies in August, left his passport locked in Abu’s office. At first I pretended I did not have mine either, thinking that if it was urgent we not leave Senegal, better the news that we couldn’t enter the Gambia come to Habib from the soldiers than from me and Nick. While Habib tried to reason with (bribe) the border guards, and a ten year old boy tried to convince Nick to give him his bicycle or at least pay him for directions to a backroads way into the Gambia, I called Awa, the wonderfully supportive motherly lady whom I fell in love with at the PC center in Thies. Although I learned later that she had been worried, she spoke to me as if it was the expected route. She chatted with the driver and then advised that we give whatever money was asked for. So I found my passport, Habib folded a couple thousand CFA into it, and soon we were in Gambia waiting for the ferry. Over the course of five hours the sept-place moved to three different parking spots, each a bit closer to the ferry. Every boy with a cooler of soda cans, and every woman with a head loaded with colorful fabric, stopped by our windows and tried to reason or stare us into making a purchase. I read, wrote in my journal, listened to music, and ate fruit. In all, a fine roadstop.
We arrived at the regional house in Kolda about thirteen hours after we left Thies. Regional houses are houses that Peace Corps rents to host volunteers when away from their sites. There is one in each region. It’s a library, kitchen, medical supplies storage facility, meeting place, shower, and generally a place to go to be with other English speakers. Three of the local volunteers were there to welcome us. They gave us cold bissap juice and they cooked us pancakes. In a stark contrast to the morning, I felt very shy and quiet, as I had initially with my stage-mates. I slept outside, under a mosquito net under the house’s shade structure, feeling very happy.
Yesterday the volunteers took us to the market. We bought matresses, sheets, pillows, buckets, laundry soap, trunks, bleach, and other odds and ends. I bought a fan, which I’m already falling in love with. She is a bright green, and she looks lovely with the softer green of my walls.Kolda seems really nice. It’s cleaner, calmer, and greener than Thies and Kaffrine. The local volunteers say they love the area and the people. I’m so relieved. After the shopping trip Matt climbed a tree in the regional house’s yard. He held a long wooden spear and poked at mangos until many had fallen. Then we feasted.
Jenny, the urban ag volunteer who has been here for one year, and whose place I will be taking in the garden, told me about Sek. She says he is hard working, kind, a good language teacher, patient, understanding of cultural differences, and fun. Sometimes. Then there are the times like when he found a lock in the garden and blamed it, and the person who placed it there, for causing the garden’s meager yield. Or when he pulled up the whole lettuce crop because it was growing too slowly for him. Or when he moved Jenny’s okra from a garden plot to a table plot for absolutely no reason, unless his goal was to kill them, in which case he was successful. Or when he told Jenny that he had used magic to make the prior volunteer leave Senegal early. Or when he went to the garden in the middle of the night to do a ceremony to ward off evil. Or when he stopped speaking to Jenny for three weeks. She said that for a long time she thought she was crazy, but this passed when she realized he was. I hope I can get along with him, enjoy him, and do good work in the garden.Today finally was installation. Demba, a teacher from Thies, introduced me to city officials, the gendarms, and the police. Then he took me home. I am typing from my huge, beautiful, round, straw and bamboo roofed hut. My new name is Jenabo Ba. I pulled some water up from the well, ate lunch with my mom and some kids, maybe my sibblings, and am now supposed to be resting. I talked a bit with the family. Sometimes they gave me blank stares when I used basic words that I had spoken often in Thies. I hear I’m in the Pulafuta part of town, not the Fulakunda. I don’t know what my family speaks, and I am worried. The family seems kind. They expected me to be a wierd bewildered toubob, and it is comforting to be able to fit someone’s expectations.

2006-05-22T03:38:00.000-07:00

May 12,
Today was swearing in. It was a big ceremony at Ebbits Field in Dakar, overlooking the ocean. We all wore Senegalese outfits, and when we walked as a group it looked to me like a rainbow of marbles rolling along. The clothing is very loose and brightly colored. I wore purple with pink and blue embroidery. Each person in my stage was called to the podium to receive a paper, like a diploma. For once I was the flamboyant one. I ran up to the stage pumping my fists in the air in triumph, and on my way back to my seat I blew kisses to the everyone. I've never had the nerve to do more than quietly walk and shake hands at prior ceremonies, so I was pleased with my nerve. Surprisingly, wuite a few admin folks later said sincerely that they had appreciated my enthusiasm. After the ceremony we went to a pool. On the bus ride home we danced in the aisles.

2006-05-22T03:37:00.000-07:00

May 11,
On Monday I went to an art gallery near my house to buy a painting as a wedding gift for Osei, my friend in NY. I’ve visited the gallery before, and I really like the artist’s style. He uses bright bursts of colors, oil paints I think, and it looks like the paint is laid on very quickly. He makes swirling bubbling backrounds, and above that he has women with bowls on their heads, boys playing, or musicians. I had hoped to buy and mail one of his paintings on glass, but he was certain it would arrive in shards. The women are lovely, and the musicians are fitting for Osei, a guitarist, but I liked the playing boys best. The artist, Issa, had none on paper in the size I wanted, so he agreed to make one for me. He told me to come pick it up the next day. On Tuesday I sped to his gallery after school. The painting was not ready but it was a great visit. I had my violin on my back, and the artist asked what it was. This led to me asking if he played anything, and soon I was harmonizing with his guitar strumming. We played together for about thirty minutes, during which another man stood by listening, (inspiring in me a brief fantasy about him being connected to someone like Baba Mal and inviting me to quit Peace Corps and go on tour with the band.) Mostly we improvised, but also Issa taught me the melody to a Senegalese lullaby. When I started accompanying him I was in tune with myself but not with him. This forced me to find a position on my violin where my hand would play notes to match his, but where I could not comfortably name the notes. My improv teacher in Atlanta suggested doing this, or retuning the violin to something other than a series of fifths, to force myself to lose some degree of familiarity with the violin and thus approach it instrument slightly differently. It worked. The playing ended with us both enthusiastic about doing it again. Wednesday the Urban Aggies went Youssepha’s house for dinner. Youssepha is our trainer, and he’s a sweet, softspoken, huge, very enthusiastic man. To hear him speak, his life is full of nearly exclusively extremely wonderful people and opportunites. He has been talking of having us over for a while now, so last week when he asked what we wanted to do in our last week of training, I said I wanted to eat at his house. I liked taking a tour of his house, meeting his family, seeing him play with his three year old daughter, and eating the veg plate specially prepared for me, but the best parts of the evening were getting to talk with him and getting to play violin. He had asked that I bring my violin, and after dinner he invited his family into the room where we were eating so they could listen. I played a few very short tunes solo, and then played sing-a-long tunes for the rest of the night, ranging from “the chicken dance,” to songs from “the sound of music,” to 1980’s pop music. Very strange to find myself in Senegal playing accompaniment to a gang of folks singing Madonna. I had so much fun. Today the compliments Youssepha gave me from his wife felt merrily like a love song. It’s a pleasure to hear I’m liked.Today I went back to Issa’s to pick up the painting. I unintentionally arrived just before he, another artist, and a young boy were about to eat lunch. For them it was a foregone conclusion that I would eat with them and then play violin. When I told them I had just eaten, they laughed and told me that in Africa if you are at someone’s house at lunch, you must sit and eat. So I sat and ate. We talked of things like African authors, the cultural mix of French, Islamic, and Senegalese culture in Senegal, the value of creating art, and NYC. At least, I think these were the topics. I did my best to nod and smile at the appropriate times. Occasionally I would confess that I did not understand and ask for a repetition, but I’ve realized I find such interactions more pleasant and enjoyable if I stop fighting my confusion and just accept it as my natural state in Senegal. After my second lunch of the day, Issa and I played music for a while, stopping only when another artist offered us a plate of sliced mangos. When I left with Osei’s painting, Issa gave me two handpainted greeting cards for free. I’m loving playing violin here.

2006-05-22T03:34:00.000-07:00

May 5,
Today and yesterday were the counterpart workshop. Counterparts are Senegalese people who live in the villages and towns to which we shall be moving, and who should guide us, look out for us, and support us over the next two years. Sometimes this relationship works well, and the counterpart’s home becomes a second home for the volunteer, and the professional relationship is one of great synergy. Other times the counterparts spends every day sitting under a tree chatting, or trying to pursuade the volunteer to marry him. In any case, at the moment our counterparts are people who traveled far to spend two days speaking to us in langauges we barely understand. Luckily, much of the time was taken up with seminars designed to help counterparts understand us, our needs, our dis/abilities, and our desires. In order to engender sympathy for us and our poor language skills, I gave a twenty minute class on Hebrew. The head of the language program, Simone, coached me on how best to teach some basic greetings. When it came time for me to perform, four of the counterparts, mine included, were chosen to sit close to my chalkboard. We studied how to say good morning, how are you, fine thanks, what is your name, and my name is___. More was planned for the lesson, but after they stumbled and bumbled over this much, Simone decided I should stop; they had gotten the point. My counterpart, when deprived of his notebook, was no better than my other students, but I was pleased to see he was the only one who took notes. His name is Mamadou Sek, and he is an adorable skinny little man with an infectious smile and blue eyes. I hear he is a famously hard worker, honest, reliable, and generous. And he has banana trees. He told me he will introduce me to his family, and with their help I’ll be speaking Fulakunnda in no time. I was very anxious before meeting him, concerned about making a good first impression and worried lest I dislike him. I am incredibly relieved.

2006-05-22T03:33:00.000-07:00

May 1,
Last weekend I biked with friends about 75 kilometers round trip to a beach. The wonderful Tom, my mate in the talent show, coordinated directions, the renting of a house on the water, and food. The location was perfect. Nothing seperated our porch from the beach. I spent a lot of time just watching the waves, and later at night, lying on my back stargazing with friends. We named a few new constellations in our honor. A chef among us orchestrated a beautiful meal which, because it’s easiest to buy and use simple ingredients, was entirely vegan. The house provided a small stereo, so we spent most of the night on the porch with music, cards, and the sound of waves. Meanwhile, someone removed our bathroom window and snuck into our house. Nothing was taken or noticeably disturbed, but one girl did see him run out of our compound, and hours later, while I was flossing in the bathroom, I saw him looking in the gaping hole of a window. We were all careful to lock our doors that night.

2006-05-22T03:32:00.000-07:00

April 28
Thursday was the stage’s talent show. I heard that the great success of the prior stage’s show was a magic act. The teachers were floored by the card tricks. On learning this, I grew hopes of putting on a fire show. I figured swinging balls of fire, usually in my control but occasionally hitting me, and maybe a moment of eating fire, would make playing cards pale in comparison. The first matter was to rig myself a pair of practice poi. My friend Amy Lau insisted I bring shoe laces with me. She said they were useful for all sorts of surprising things, and as an example, she told me that if tied correctly to a dripping faucet that is keeping you awake, a shoe lace can silence the drip. I safety pinned shoe laces to balled up socks to make an extremely lightweight but functional pair of practice poi. For about a week after attaching the foot accessories, I was obsessed. Many times each evening I would sneak into my bedroom for five or ten minute practice sessions, and before bed and again in the morning I would swing my socks around until I could consistently perform a new trick. I went so far as to buy petrol, the only fire-friendly option around here, and look into ropes before I got word that this combination would most likely burn me. So, instead, I played violin at the talent show. Tom and I performed three blue-grass pieces that we’ve been working on for the past few weeks. This was my first time performing anything blue-grassy, including chords and fast improvisations, and as just before each song I had a moment of certainty that I had bluffed my way onto the stage and was about to squeak out only hideous noise. After the first, “Two Dollar Bill,” the audience of our stage-mates and teachers gave us a standing ovation. It was heaven. Through the comedians and fashion show, and through the dance party and bonfire, I floated high above the ground.

2006-05-22T03:29:00.001-07:00

April 27
There can be no blog entry tonight because I am studying “the.” Fulakunnda has more than twenty ways to say “the.”

2006-05-22T03:29:00.000-07:00

April 25
I once dated a boy who insisted on washing my feet. He said it was not an act of affection but one of self-preservation. My feet can smell a bit bad at times. After school today my Senegalese mother looked at my feet, shook her head, and sent me outside to wash them. She may have said something about thinking I should know better, but I’m just going on tone of voice with that, not actual vocabulary. A second after I got outside I was joined by my eleven year old sister who was under instruction to teach me to wash my feet. She showed me where the soap is kept, and she had me fill a kettle with water from the outdoor tap. Next she directed me to the young mango tree and bade me hold my foot over the tree so that the water she poured on my foot would not go to waste. I gently soaped my foot and looked at her expectantly, thinking she would rinse me. Again with the headshaking. Three or four times we went through this for each foot. I would scrub, she would say it wasn’t enough, and I would have to scrub more. When my feet were finally deemed satisfactory she took my hand and paraded me before our mother.

2006-05-22T03:26:00.000-07:00

April 18
Today I woke feeling a little sick in the throat. I didn’t really think I had a fever, but the medical suitcase we were given contains a thermometer, so I decided to postpone my bucket bath by learning my temperature. After a few tries that yielded numbers like 95, 98, and 101, I gave the thermometer a vigorous shake, thinking to reset it and get a fresh start. It flew out of my hand and smashed on the floor. The mercury spread out into many little balls. If you roll one towards another, the two unite when they touch. I sat on the floor in my pajamas playing with my eventually big ball of mercury, experimenting with how it feels to touch mercury and how the substance reacts to being poked and prodded by other objects, until when shifting my position to retrieve the ball after one particularly forceful push, and I placed myself on top of a tiny sharp shard of the thermometer that has been stinging my thigh ever since.
However, language class went well today. When Nick, the source of my throat and glass problems, left class at my urging after spending the first thirty minutes looking worriedly into his hands after each loud cough to see what had emerged, I discovered that my language class has been one person too big. After Nick went to the sick-bay, I excelled. I am usually the slow student, still taking notes on one concept when Nick and Samba are beginning the next, which frequently leads to Samba waiting for me to answer questions that I never actually heard. But today, partially because he went at my pace, and partially because as the only person there to answer Samba’s questions I had to be on the ball for the whole class, I excelled. I think the demoralizing feeling of giving blank stares has been making me slower. Feeling today like I was doing well made me act smarter. Also, I used a little trick to gain some respect. Yesterday Samba began teaching the future tense. He covered the first class of verbs but didn’t have time reach the second and third. Last night I consulted the grammar book, and today I very nonchalantly spoke in the future tense using a second class verb with the correct suffix. Samba nearly fell over. He asked how I knew the verb structure. I replied in Fulakunnda it was because I am Senegalese.

2006-04-19T07:00:00.000-07:00

April 14, 2006
Today after lunch we were brought to the basketball court on which is painted a map of Senegal. Regina, one of the Serer teachers was sitting in a hammock. In Senegal there are many ethnic groups. Some are considered relatives, and some are considered rivals. The Serer and the Pulaar like to make fun of each other. Regina often calls me her slave, and whenever she sees me doing manual work like building a garden table, she comments on it being appropriate work for me. She also occasionally meows at me, as if to insult me by calling me a cat. Little does she know. So, seeing her comfy and relaxed, I sat on top of her. Shortly thereafter we were told to close our eyes, and from the hammock Regina and I could hear volunteers making ooh and ahh sounds as teachers spun them around and guided them onto the map, and soon we joined in with mmms and oyyys of our own, which eventually became ar-ar-arooos, howls to an unseen moon. Eventually Awa, the manager of the homestays, came and got me. She is going through menopause, and her husband is older than she, but we joke that I am after her husband and that she wants to beat me for enticing him towards infidelity. When she took me onto the map she told me she was sending me far far away from her husband, and she deposited me, as I expected, on top of Kolda, where Nick was already standing.
No other volunteers from our stage are near us, I’m sorry to say. I have some friends who I’ll be able to reach for weekend visits if I’m willing to spend a while on a bus, but all the people in biking distance I will have to meet after I get to Kolda. Well, I have a phone and will at least be able to talk to my friends. So far it seems Jessica is going to the smallest town. It has less than 200 people, and most of them will be related to her.
Massali, the manager of the urban ag program, told me a bit about my place in Kolda. It sounds dreamy. I will live in a family compound, but I will have my own hut. It is a huge round hut with straw on the roof. It has a bedroom, living-room, and bathroom. And electricity! My living-room is bigger than many volunteers’ only room. It has a backyard area where I can garden, and where I hope I can string a hammock. Will, a volunteer who is now on his third year, said it’s among the best volunteer houses he has ever seen. It’s in a beautiful neighborhood, lush and dense with trees, many of which are mango and banana trees. My family is wealthy and educated. I’ll have a bunch of sisters who are in high school and college. I will not have running water, but the well is in the family compound, and I frankly (easy from a distance, of course) like the idea of drawing water from a well every morning. In the midst of my electricity, cell-phone, and cyber cafes, it’ll be nice to have that reminder of where I am. I do not know how an indoor toilet works where there is no running water, but I guess I shall learn.
This week we received our bikes! They are brand new trek mountain bikes. Such a pleasure. Most of my riding thus far has been in a single file line with at least three other toubobs, all who were also on new bikes and wearing sparkly helmuts. It feels like a parade, or like the spectacle of a mama duck crossing the street followed by ducklings. When I fell behind after slipping in sand, pedestrians began called, “Faster, faster!” as I tried to catch up.
Toubob: this is a word that basically means “different,” but can be taken as “honky” or as something more offensive. Kids call out “toubob!” every time they see me. Sometimes I reply in French or Pular that I’m not white. I say I’m black and ask where the white person is. Today I responded by saying “Asalam allekum,” which is the basic greeting. They toubobbed me again, so I repeated myself in a tone of voice that said, “Come now, I know your manners are better than that.” I like that some tones of voices seem universal. They laughed and returned the greeting in a tone that sounded a tad apologetic. If the kids are close to my home I usually introduce myself. I have also tried singing toubobtoubobtoubobtoubob back to the kids and doing a jig. Today a volunteer in her second year told us that regardless of how affective our work is, for the next two years we will be like a cartoon show on TV for our villagers.

2006-04-19T06:49:00.000-07:00

April 9
Joy! I am typing in my bedroom where my computer is plugged into the adapter from the US which is plugged into the extension chord I bought last night, which is plugged into the hole in the wall into which my adapter does not fit. Last night I also bought a cell phone, so you can call me at 221-415-5731. 221 is the country code. I think that simply dialing those ten numbers should get you through to my phone. Nick, aka Usmaan, helped me navigate down-town Thies to buy the electronics. Nick is the other Fulakunnda student. We spend half of every school day asking each other where we are from, how many friends our mothers have, how old our brothers are, what we ate for dinner last night, etcetera. Fulakunnda is only spoken in a relatively small section of the country, so I think Nick and I will see a lot of each other over the next two years. So you will probably hear a lot of him. An interesting fact I learned about him last night is that he always carries toilet paper; Nick will try to complete Peace Corps without ever using the wet hand method.
Last week Samba, my language teacher, taught me how to count in Fulakunnda. I practiced around the house by pointing to objects and gleefully announcing how many there were. Sometimes I would stop a family member in the hallway and triumphantly count to ten or even higher. The family is patient with me. They understand that every word, let alone clump of words spoken together, is a landmark occasion for me, but by the time I was able to make my numerical speeches counting by five, even the young kids’ faces had faded from indulgent smiles to looks of concern. Maybe they feared their American would be permanently stuck in this numeric reverie. Sesame Street in Fulakunnda would be heaven.
Today I had my first language exam. It was an oral test broken into three sections. I had to describe myself, then my family, and then speak in the past tense. Nick and I took turns doing each section, and when he was being tested I curled up in a hammock. For most of the exam I felt like a crummy student, and was irked by my slow slow slow speech. (Last week the head of the agriculture department predicted that based on my speed when I speak English, my speed in Fulakunda will be a sore point for me for the next two years.) During the last section, however, I had an epiphany. Instead of scouring my head for vocabulary to would describe what I did yesterday, I realized I should instead issue a cattle call for all vocabulary words. Then, from the verbs and nouns that presented themselves, I constructed a picture of things I did not in fact do yesterday, but could have done. When this new technique of conversing occurred to me it was like someone had dropped a neutralizing (water cleansing) tablet into water darkened by an iodine (water cleansing) tablet, obliterating the murkiness. This evening I tried the vocab technique again and this resulted in the longest conversation I’ve yet had with the grandmother. We spoke of dancing, I joked about her being 27, maybe 35 (once again showing-off my numeric prowess), and we did a whole lot of greeting each other.
Recently I almost made my first friend outside the auspices of Peace Corps. I met Haddi one day when, after I got off the bus by my house, she waved to me from her roof top. She wanted to know who I was and why I was there. She came to the ground to meet me, and after I told her I am an agriculture volunteer, she brought me inside her family’s house to show me pictures of the farm where she has worked. We spoke for more than a half hour about gardening, Peace Corps, religion, and music. She told me she plays drums, and she then performed a bit. We made tentative plans to play together. After I told her that PC gives us a few classes in Islam, she invited me to a ceremony that took place last night. I left really delighted by how much I had been able to say and understand, and eager to see her again. When I got home and told my mother why I was a bit later than usual, she looked concerned. She said that girls can be used as booby traps, and that I should never enter a stranger’s house. The next night she went with me to meet Haddi, and I stood beside my mother, who is a couple inches shorter than me, and couldn’t stop grinning as she sized up Haddi while they talked about Haddi, me, Peace Corps, and my poor Fulakunnda. They spoke Wolof, but I got the gist. After we left, the mother told me that Haddi is a very nice girl, but because she does not speak Fulakunnda I should not spend much time with her; she couldn’t approve of more than the occasional ten minutes after school. And she also told me that I should put the violinning on hold, saying I’ll have plenty of time for it in the village. I’ve only played in the house twice. Peace Corps warned that one challenge in the home-stay experience would be the loss of independence. Well, Haddi was only visiting Thies, anyway. And even if I can’t keep her as a friend, I remain delighted at this test of my French.

2006-04-03T06:48:00.000-07:00

March 29
At the house where I am living during my home-stay in Thies, there is one small room for the toilet and another for the shower. The toilet is a slab of porcelain on the ground. There are two ridged sections where I put my feet. Between these sections the porcelain slants downward until it reaches the hole. The house has no toilet paper, though there is a toilet paper holder on the windowsill. Instead of toilet paper, there is a bucket of water in which floats a plastic cup. You are supposed to pour the water into your hand and then wash and wipe your bottom. Afterwards, soap up well, or in the absence of soap, scrub hands under water. Until I first used this paperless method I could not grasp the strength of the insult of offering a person something with your left hand or using your left hand at the food bowl.
The shower is much like a shower in the US except that half the time the water does not work. Lately the electricity has been out in the evenings and mornings, and the water goes with it. So, I have been taking bucket baths. After getting over the initial strangeness, I must agree that this is a great way to clean. I think that this method of covering myself in soap and being able to see the white film everywhere before I wash it off ensures a more careful cleaning.
And that ends the tour of the bathroom.

This is a four night five day visit to a volunteer who has been serving in Senegal for one year. Peace Corps has all new volunteers do a demystification visit during their first week in the country. It is a wonderful idea. I went to Kaffrin with another girl from my stage (group of volunteers who started at the same time), and we stayed with Anne, an urban agriculture volunteer. I expect my work will be similar to hers. On the first day she took us to the market for bean sandwiches and grocery shopping. This was a shocking experience. The market is a hot, crowded, loud, fish-smelling series of stands where people sell vegetables, fish, fabric, sandals, and other things. The stands are generally just tables on which the salable items are displayed in piles. Because I would not push people or force my way forward, I kept getting separated from the others. We went to the market every morning, and gradually I got used to the sites. An elderly man who sells vegetables likes to joke with Anne about her being his wife. When he saw Anne with two new females he broke into praises to Allah for giving him three wives, and he hollered threats at all nearby men lest they look at his wives.
Anne took us to some gardens where she has been working and giving advice. One garden was thriving, another contained nothing living save the mule who was looking for food therein, and a third was a new garden with short green sprouts of bissap plants. This last garden is a cooperative belonging to some local women. They have been having problems with their top soil drying, and they asked Anne for advice. She gave an impromptu lecture on ground covering techniques. I could not understand a word of it, but the fact that she, a girl like me, having just a bachelors, a few years of work experience, and the Peace Corps training, is able to give valuable advice to Senegalese gardeners, has made me very optimistic about the likelihood that I will have something to offer the folks of my village.
Demyst also exposed me to the heat. Anne says the seasons are hot, hot and humid, hot hot, and so hot you wish you were dead. As I lay on the floor wilting in front of her fan, which was useless due to the lack of electricity, she said this weather was only hot. I would have opted for a small village if given the choice, but I think I will be going to a city. It will probably have electricity. I have plans to buy the first fan I can find, and to have a refrigerator that is always stocked with oranges.

A day after demyst the homestay began. Each volunteer was given a cue-card on which was a Senegalese name. Likewise, each Senegalese family had a cue-card with a volunteer’s name. At the sound of the drum we came running from opposite directions trying to find matches and then embracing. I now live with a family of seven. There is a husband, one wife (some families here do have more), and five children, ranging from six months to seventeen years of age. The four year old likes to climb on me and cover my papers with her hands while I’m studying. I am told she is testing me. I firmly objected when she began sticking fingers in my ear, but otherwise I am having a hard time disciplining her. My Senegalese mother told me that because I will be here for another two months, and because the girl is my sister, I really must learn to control her. She suggested I pinch her ears. When she shrieks at me while I’m trying to learn Fulakunnda, I imagine things much more satisfying than merely tweaking her ears, but I would no more be welcome in the house if I indulged myself. I get along well with the other kids, and the mother is very affectionate and patient with me. She checks on my homework, noodges me to move quickly in the morning, and has had to remind me to comb my hair. Being in the house makes me home sick, but otherwise it is fine.
Especially nice moments with the family include practicing vocab with the eleven year old girl in the backyard in a cool windy spot, dancing and singing with the eldest daughter, and walking arm-in-arm with the mother.
The neighbors are very friendly. As I walked home from the bus stop today I greeted everyone I saw, and often this led to more people coming outside to say hello and laugh with me about my limited Fulakunnda. A few of them admitted to having watched me this week. I have been singing, dancing, and doing push-ups at the bus stop, thinking I was alone.

I’m in a phase of Peace Corps now called PST (pre-service training). This is a two month intense and constant schooling process. By the end of this period I should have good language, cross-cultural, and agricultural skills. Today I spent 5.5 hours in language class. There is one other student. The class is taught in French. This was the third day of language classes. One girl got up and walked out of her Pulaar class in tears today, returning only after a five-minute walk and a self-pep-talk. Somewhere around the fourth hour I told my teacher, in my broken French, that my brain had exploded. He let us take a five minute break. Around the fifth hour the stress of trying to place random syllables that are newly floating in my head into an order that makes sense according to some grammar rules that have yet to be spoken of made me to burst into a laughing fit bordering on hysteria. It turns out similar things were happening in all the classes. Tomorrow we have only 2 hours of language. I do wonder at the reasoning behind the schedule.

2006-03-28T11:29:00.001-08:00

March 26,
I am at a cyber cafe in Thies now, struggling with the French keyboard. It reduces me halfway back to the search and poke method of typing. Time is short, so I can not respond to the comments directly. But I wanted to tell you it made me feel wonderful to hear support and enthusiasm from my family. I shall soon, enjoying the leisure of time and a qwerty keyboard, type an entry about demyst, training, and my homestay. For now, I am going on a hunch and a rumor, I suggest you read about the city or region of Kolda. Everything else aside, I think you will be pleased by its proximity to the safari-full national park.

2006-03-28T11:29:00.000-08:00

March 17
My flight to Senegal was quick and pleasant, thanks largely to the good books my uncle chose for me.
When my group arrived in Senegal we were greeted by Malcolm, the country director for Senegal’s Peace Corps. On seeing my violin he told me he plays a few instruments and has a group that gets together once a week to try a night of Irish, bluegrass, or folk. They meet in Dakar which is too far from Thies (where I am now, pronounced “chess”) for an evening visit. Hopefully I’ll be able to join them occasionally.
We rode from the airport in Dakar to the Peace Corps village in Thies shortly after landing. Everyone stared out the window at the goats, the boys playing beside the street, the immaculate women in bright beautiful fabrics, the men hanging out the backs of busses, the baobab trees, etc. When we pulled into the village the staff was singing and dancing in welcome. There was a brief welcome for us, they told us where to find clean water (the coolers – never ever ever the taps), and sent us to our rooms. As we walked to the dorms (picture long barracks with very inviting bright patterned bedspreads making the rooms homey) I first noticed the birds. They are constantly overhead and always in song.
The Peace Corps village is a small compound that formerly belonged to the army. The buildings are all one story and look a like stucco. Half the bathrooms have only a hole in the floor. (I only learned the existence of the other half today.) The ground is sand, and it is frequently raked and sprayed. The trees are green, and there is an abundance of flower bushes starting at shoulder height. I believe there are three hammocks. The central meeting place is outdoors under a large round straw roof. I’ve yet to feel anything approaching NY summer heat. May it all be so nice.
The first day here consisted of meals with delicious veg options, a brief welcome meeting, two nap times, a lot of speaking in French, and about an hour of drumming. We all danced. Knowing I was in Senegal dancing with Senegalese to African drumming I couldn’t stop smiling. Early in the day I had felt very nervous and overwhelmed by the scope of what I’d gotten into. Ever since the dancing I’ve been feeling wonderful.
Today began schooling. We had our first lesson on staying healthy, nearly four hours of Wolof, and a lesson on staying safe. I missed most of the last class because it conflicted with my meeting with Cathy, our nurse. These meetings were set up to review any health issues. I was her last appointment of the day, and we spent about four times the allotted time. She was willing to answer questions, so we talked about eczema (which I’ll have to kick because open sores can easily gather infections), shaving (which she said I’d be safer to avoid, again for fear of infections), vegetarianism, body odor, the type of family I may join, and more.
Tonight a bunch of us played Frisbee in the courtyard.
On Sunday I will go to a village to stay with a current volunteer for four days. My job is to walk around, talk to people, look a the plants and flowers, and just soak it up. Such a pleasure.

2006-03-14T17:07:00.000-08:00

Monday morning Mom drove me to the New Rochelle train station, and after much talking, laughing, and hugging, I got on the train and cried as it pulled away. About twenty minutes later I realized the anxiety and nausea were gone at last.
The two days of staging were pretty fun. There are 36 people in my staging group. Most of them will be health volunteers, a handful will do environmental education, and the remaining seven, of which I'm a part, shall do agriculture. Peace Corps is putting us up in a nice hotel. I'm trying to relish the pleasures of running water, electricity, and porcelain toilets. To being the staging we were each given a paper listing activities like studying with a Shaolin master, doing an independent study in Bosnia, and knowing how to can pickles. Our first assignment was to find out who among our group did each of these things. A good way for us to have instant respect for one another, I think. My item on the list? "Volunteered with cats in Humane Societies across the USA." An apt representation of my values.
I'm worried about my diet. I'll eat what I must, and hopefully it will taste good, but I dislike the fact that much of what I eat will contain fish.
Chuck, who volunteered in Tunisia in the 70's, led the staging. He began by asking us a slew of trivia questions about the Peace Corps. He was really cheerful and enthusiastic. I think he delights in welcoming us into the adventure. He talked to us about safety, expectations, fears, precautions we can take, and the like. He related stories from his time in Tunisia. Some were inspiring, like the one about him tutoring a boy and quickly bringing him from an illiterate to a 4th grade reading level. Some were daunting, like the number of times he has had malaria. Surely the vaccinations were weaker then. I hope. Mostly staging consisted of the volunteers being broken into small groups for discussion, drawing activities, making a skit, playing word games, etc. Very little was spoken specifically concerning Senegal. Rather, general ideas were discussed and, equally important, we got to talk and play with one another. I'm so glad that when I land in Senegal I will be with familiar faces rather than strangers.

2006-03-11T07:35:00.000-08:00

Today is Saturday, and on Monday morning I will ride a train to Philadelphia where the Peace Corps staging will take place. I understand staging to be a series of lectures on what to expect and how to behave abroad, followed by a slew of vaccinations. I waver between being excited and nauseous. Mom and I spent most of this past week struggling with the packing list, the shopping list, and various to-do lists. Mom has been amazing. More supportive and encouraging even than I hoped she'd be.
Almost everything that I'm taking to Senegal, including a new violin, has been purchased this week. I know that I can buy many things in Senegal, and whatever clothing I have I'll be able to deal with, but with each item I consider taking, I feel like I'm contemplating marriage. Is it light enough, modest enough, breathable, does it match enough other pieces, and do I like its color? Does wicking matter? (Jennifer Tian, my clothing guidance counselor, I need you now!) I wonder if in a few weeks I'll laugh at how concerned I've been.
Getting to sleep at nights is difficult because of the many tasks yet undone, friends unspoken to, and words I cannot translate into French spinning in my head. But Mom, Jim, and I are still laughing a lot, and I can always read myself to sleep.