I survived the Fouta! For the last ten days I was living with a current volunteer named Caitlin seeing what her life is like and working on my Pulaar. If you want to get a good idea of what my life will be like up north you can check out her blog: http://caitlininsenegal.blogspot.com/ its a lot more in depth than my blog plus she has posted a lot of pictures. Speaking of pics, I uploaded a couple from the beach and training (http://flickr.com/photos/24553479@N08/) but I don't have my camera with me to upload the ones I took last week but I will try to upload them at some point.
Anyways, the north. Well it was hot thats for sure. It got up to 137 F (53 C) one day, that means that you do not do anything between the hours of 11 and 5. We would have class or do an activity in the morning and then spend the rest of the day sitting in a puddle of own sweat. But its really not as bad as it sounds. I stayed hydrated by drinking a good 8-10 litres of water a day and by the end of the week the heat did not bother me nearly as much. Its going to be an adjustment but its possible. While we there I met someone who had worked on development projects in my village, which got me excited about the work possibilities. We also visited a garden in her town and I got to see that stuff actual grew in the north and that is another area of work I could venture into. Caitlin is a health volunteer so she taught a class at the elementary school about germs and the importance of hand washing and we got to observe a class at the middle school to get a better idea of what the Senegalese school system is like. Other than that most of our time was spent in her family compound or visiting her fiends in town. Everyone was so welcoming and patient with us trying to speak Pulaar and accomplish the tasks we had to do during the week. Oh and I got my hair braided into corn rows. It looks pretty ridiculous but is so much easier to manage. Pictures may or may not surface at some point in the future.
Training is almost over, swear in is May 9th (that is if I pass my language test, so far no one in my class has reached the level but hopefully that will change during the next two weeks). The last bit of training is packed with a trip to Dakar and workshop with our counterparts who shall becoming to Thies from each of our sites to meet us and learn about the work that we will are supposed to do at site.
Lastly I have to mention plastic bags. Before I came to Senegal I was on campaign against plastic bags. I would bring my own bags when I went shopping and would pester everyone I knew to do the same. Well now I am in the country of plastic bags. Everything from water, oil, peanut butter to plastic bags themselves come in plastic bags. And since there is no waste management system here these bags just line the streets. I know that as a Peace Corps Volunteer it is out of my means to tackle this problem on the scale I would like, it is something that I will try to work on on some level. But the next time you go shopping just think of me drowning in a sea of plastic bags and bring a reusable one with you. Thanks!
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
sites and stuff
Time continues to pass quickly here, as I now find myself in the middle of week five in Senegal. A lot has happened in the last week and a half here. Last Friday we all found out our sites for the next two years. At the training center there is a basketball court with a map of Senegal painted on it, so our trainers had al of us close our eyes and they positioned us on the map approximately where our sites are, so when we all opened our eyes we would not only see where we would be living and working during the next two years but also who our closest neighbors would be. My site is in the north of Senegal on the river, its a village of about 2000 people located about 5k from the river. Tomorrow my language class is heading to a town in the north to spend ten days of training with a current volunteer in her village, so I will be able to get a better idea of what life up north is like. Up to now I have yet to have a conversation with anyone about the north without the other person mentioning how hot it is there. Apparently evenings there currently drop to a nice and chilly 95 degrees F (33 C), but at least I will have the river running by my village for me to swim in (and get schistosomiasis from).
Other than site placements the other exciting thing to happen was my trip to the beach last weekend. It was the first weekend that my training group was allowed to the Thies area,s o we made the most of it by renting a couple houses on the beach Saturday night and spending 24 hours hanging out, swimming and relaxing. It was a much needed break from the hectic training schedual.
Other than site placements the other exciting thing to happen was my trip to the beach last weekend. It was the first weekend that my training group was allowed to the Thies area,s o we made the most of it by renting a couple houses on the beach Saturday night and spending 24 hours hanging out, swimming and relaxing. It was a much needed break from the hectic training schedual.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Today is Senegal's Independence Day and I have the day off from class, so I am currently sitting in a cafe with free wi-fi where I just ate a crepe with icecream. Yeah my life is sweet. The training staff let us stay at the center last night rather than at our homestays, so I have had some time to hang out with the other trainees and decompress a little bit. I typed up another entry but apparently only saved it to my usb key and not my harddrive so I will try to summerize it the best I can.
Two weeks ago I moved into my homestay, I am living with a family in a town about 20k out of Thies. My family consists of my mother and father, an aunt, two brothers who are in their late 20s, a sister who I believe is younger than me and then two more brothers who are about and 13. There are more people in the family who live in other parts of the country as well. My brothers speak french which is nice since they are able to help translate for me, since my parents only speak Pulaar. Our house is pretty nice, it has two buildings with bedrooms in them, but most of our time is spent outside in the courtyard area. there's electricity and a faucet in the compound for water and we have a tv that we watch outside at night under the stars.
Week three in Senegal is almost over and I have found myself in a nice routine. i've begun to accept my language shortcomings and have settled into my home stay. Its hard to think of what to say since my daily life now seems almost monotonous now, so I am going to take a cope out and just explain what a typical day in training is like.
6:30: I wake up, get dressed, brush my teeth and head out to the main road to wait for the Peace Corps land cruiser to pick me and the other volunteers in my town up.
7:30 Arrive at the training center in Thies were I shower and eat my breakfast of baguettes and nescafe.
8:15 Class begins. We tend to have language classes in the morning, so this means that I stumble through pulaar with the five other people in my class while trying to wake up
10:15 Coffee break
10:45 more class, usually another language class, more stumbling attempts to speak pulaar. I now know how to conjugate to classes of verbs in the past tense but am still waiting to learn the present tense.
12:30 lunch, we eat family style around large bowels with spoons, at some point soon we are only going to be allowed to speak the language we are learning during lunch which will mean more stumbling through pulaar and lots of awkward silences.
2:15 first afternoon class, this tends to be anything from health, safety cross cultural or tech. We started our tree nurseries in my EE tech class the other day, I am supposed to keep 80% of it alive, I will let you know how that turns out.
4ish tea break
4:15 second afternoon class which tends to be another tech or cross cultural but sometimes they through another language class at us. Those days are not fun.
5:30 the land cruiser takes me home
6:30 arrive home, greet the family and attempt to study some pulaar before it gets too dark.
7:30 "Au Cour du Peche" a brazillian soap opera dubbed into french, otherwise known as my favorite part of my night
8:15 dinner time. We eat around a large bowel, some with spoons and others with their right hand. I prefer a spoon. Dinner tends to be rice and either fish or beans, its pretty tast\y. I sit next to my father who spends most of dinner telling me to eat more. I try to oblige his urgings the best I can, but dinner usually ends with me repeating mi haarii, mi haarri (I'm full) my most used Pulaar phrase.
After dinner Malick my younger brother makes attaya. Attaya is a type of tea that is served in shot glasses and consists of three rounds, with each round getting progressively sweeter. The whole process takes a while so I tend to only stay up through the second round.
9:30 bed time!
Two weeks ago I moved into my homestay, I am living with a family in a town about 20k out of Thies. My family consists of my mother and father, an aunt, two brothers who are in their late 20s, a sister who I believe is younger than me and then two more brothers who are about and 13. There are more people in the family who live in other parts of the country as well. My brothers speak french which is nice since they are able to help translate for me, since my parents only speak Pulaar. Our house is pretty nice, it has two buildings with bedrooms in them, but most of our time is spent outside in the courtyard area. there's electricity and a faucet in the compound for water and we have a tv that we watch outside at night under the stars.
Week three in Senegal is almost over and I have found myself in a nice routine. i've begun to accept my language shortcomings and have settled into my home stay. Its hard to think of what to say since my daily life now seems almost monotonous now, so I am going to take a cope out and just explain what a typical day in training is like.
6:30: I wake up, get dressed, brush my teeth and head out to the main road to wait for the Peace Corps land cruiser to pick me and the other volunteers in my town up.
7:30 Arrive at the training center in Thies were I shower and eat my breakfast of baguettes and nescafe.
8:15 Class begins. We tend to have language classes in the morning, so this means that I stumble through pulaar with the five other people in my class while trying to wake up
10:15 Coffee break
10:45 more class, usually another language class, more stumbling attempts to speak pulaar. I now know how to conjugate to classes of verbs in the past tense but am still waiting to learn the present tense.
12:30 lunch, we eat family style around large bowels with spoons, at some point soon we are only going to be allowed to speak the language we are learning during lunch which will mean more stumbling through pulaar and lots of awkward silences.
2:15 first afternoon class, this tends to be anything from health, safety cross cultural or tech. We started our tree nurseries in my EE tech class the other day, I am supposed to keep 80% of it alive, I will let you know how that turns out.
4ish tea break
4:15 second afternoon class which tends to be another tech or cross cultural but sometimes they through another language class at us. Those days are not fun.
5:30 the land cruiser takes me home
6:30 arrive home, greet the family and attempt to study some pulaar before it gets too dark.
7:30 "Au Cour du Peche" a brazillian soap opera dubbed into french, otherwise known as my favorite part of my night
8:15 dinner time. We eat around a large bowel, some with spoons and others with their right hand. I prefer a spoon. Dinner tends to be rice and either fish or beans, its pretty tast\y. I sit next to my father who spends most of dinner telling me to eat more. I try to oblige his urgings the best I can, but dinner usually ends with me repeating mi haarii, mi haarri (I'm full) my most used Pulaar phrase.
After dinner Malick my younger brother makes attaya. Attaya is a type of tea that is served in shot glasses and consists of three rounds, with each round getting progressively sweeter. The whole process takes a while so I tend to only stay up through the second round.
9:30 bed time!
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