Diouf Diouf Diouf!

My hut..two doors, no windows, latrine in progress, fence and screens not yet completed...
Ndiomedi, my future village. You an see the well, mosque, garden...my compound is on the other side of the garden. The Delta is beautiful! I will be just a few km away from this super salty shisto-free river inlet.
In Africa, you wait a lot.
Befor we left...Simone, Chris, Khady...we had no ideawhat lay ahead!

Hi friends. Please forgive this post as I am not currently able to adjust thelanguage and properly write about my experiences without major typing errors I predict. Ok I hope it works now...

Awesome Things:

Seeing my hut and future village

Meeting my counterparts and future family

Learning about the Serere culture and meeting the King,even if he's just a crazy old man sitting outside his hut

Seeing my Poste de Sante and watching consultations, even if one was tying off a baby's sixth fingers to cut off a few days later, eww...

Dancing!!!! I totally gained cred from the women of Pethie the first day by dancing with them

Getting to know the people of Pethie who will be connections, friends, and family for the next two years bc they are only one km away from me

Really experiencing Senegalese "teranga" (hospitality) for the first time

My other Serere trainee and our substitute language trainer for the week were awesome

Learning to appreciate an afternoon bucket bath in the bright sunlight

Learning to really appreciate my Thies host family

My new dress and jewelry my Pethie family bestowed upn me

Experiecing village life and Africa Standard Time

Not So Awesome Things:

Being force-fed 5 lunches all the same afternoon, within an hour or two.

Having people complain when I didn't eat or didn't eat much and then harass me about it

The heat

Animals everywhere, esp roosters, goats, donkeys, etc. I may offer a reward to people who kill the roosters in town, and then serve it for dinner...

Having bugs crawl on me the same night that I took my mefloquine so I had bugs on me while also having crazy dreams about bugs...ew

Roaches by the toilet/in my room

Senegalese couscous everynight for dinner with milk

Our sept place running over a sheep while going through Kaolack and really, the entire drive to and from...septs places suck!

Back, but not much time

for a post. I'm back from CBT, which was great and difficult at the same time. I did thankfully have the opportunity to see my future village, meet my family (like 50 people!), and see my hut that is currently under construction, plus meet me counterpart and observe at the Health Post I'm assigned to work at. I also received a dress from my host family for the week, which maybe I will try on and post along with other pics from the week.

THere are only two weeks left of training, which is crazy and unbelievable all at once. We go to Dakar for the day on Monday and then THursday starts a three day counterpart workshop where we all meet our counterparts (people in our communities we will be working with and who are kind of responsible for introducing us to our communities) and the following week is Swear-In, crazy!!!!!!!

I will try and post more about CBT soon, when I'm not borrowing someone else's computer.

Email Frustrations, Integration, Leaving Town,etc

This is me integrating...sideways, sorry. Thecomputer I'm using today isespecially horrible...boo! This isa picture of me integrating in my new Senegalese complet...like it? I wore it to the Centre today and itwas quite the rage, haha. I love the fabric and while the zipperisalready broken and I need to resewsomething, it's supercute.

Hey. So Iwrote a huge mass update email with details about my site assignment, but both gmail and this computer are not working for me, so I had to waitabout 20 minutes forit toNOT open thedraft email. This meansI will notbe sending out official details about my site assignment until I get a good internet connection, which may not be for anothertwo weeks, sorry. Just know that I'mgoing to the Delta and will benear Foundiougne, my department capital,solook it up. I'll have to take a Ferry between Foundiougne and my village of just 300 people.

I'm heading out of town tomorrow morning for ten days on what is called Community Based Training, basically 10 days of intensive language trainingwith my fellow Serere, and a language teacher (not our normal teacher who is very pregnant) to visit and stay with a current volunteer and see what village life is really like. Thisis the first timePC Senegal has done something to thisextent...they usually do a 3 or 4 day thing at the start oftraining, so it's a bit of a logistical fiasco, but we are all super excited and scared (trainees and trainers alike). I'm going to meet the Volunteer who will be my closest neighbor thisnext year and hopefully see my future site!

Love you and miss you! Also,letters should stop inabout two weeks and Iwill mailout a newaddress formail when Ireceive it.

Popenguinea and Serere Land, almost

The beach...yes, the Atlantic Ocean
32 of us crammed into this bus...yea...5 across
Because people will be upset if I don't include one of myself on the beach
The sun SETTING over the ATLANTIC OCEAN!!!!
The view from our house, right next to the beach!

More details later about the trip and more about Site Revelation and where I will be spending the next two years of my life in a few days (Wednesday, j'espere). Thursday I go on a site visit to the Delta (my future home) for 10 days away from technology and stuff. Love ya!

Khaadi or Khady...fam keeps chnging it!

Ndigil Ndigil?

Really? Really?

My host brother loves when I say "Ndigil ndigil," which means "really?" or "Is that true?" or "Yes, it's true!" Apparently it sounds funny the way I say it...just try it out...deegal deegal...haha

Well that was my reaction today when I found out from a Volunteer who has now completed his two year service (whom my fellow Serere speaking trainee, now known as my "Serere brother," will replace), that when I swear in (Inshallah!) I will become the first EVER Serere-speaking Health Volunteer in Senegal! Whoa! I confirmed with my awesome language teacher and APCD that this is a fact. That's a lot of pressure, huh? Now what does it mean, exactly? Well, I will receive my official site placement on Friday (woot!), but I think it means I will probably be at a new site that has never had a Volunteer before (or if they did, it was agriculture or environental ed). Health volunteers are grouped in regions, so it's possible my site will be a small Serere village in a mostly Wolof region or on the edge of one of the Serere regions or something like that, meaning I will not be the only Health Volunteer around my neck of the woods, but I may be a ways away from them, but I'm totally just speculating right now. It also means that I will have to work with my Language Trainer to create a list of health vocab in Serere, since the other languages already have them. There's going to be some groundbreaking and it will be tough as the only Serere Health Volunteer in Senegal, but I'm also freakin' excited about it. I really love the sound of the Serere language, so this will definitely encourage me to kick up my language skills as fast as possible, which isn't yet happening to the degree I want.

Along those lines, this week is our first week of evaluations. PCTs are evaluated during weeks 4, 6, and 8 (right before Swear-In), to check our overall progress in training, to make sure our language skills are at the basic level required, to check our cultural integration with our host families, to check our understanding and competancies with the culture and our fields (health, for me), and check our medical and safety/security understanding. We are always in a constant state of observance and practice, but things are kicked up with tests and such this week. This morning was my language evaluation and while I don't know exactly what level I tested into, talking with my trainer, I didn't do as badly as I had worried about (esp after an off-language day yesterday) and actually did pretty well, but it was good knowing that both she and I recognized the same problems I am having and can work on targeting them. Not surprisingly, I have the same issues with certainsentence structures and not paying enough attention to certan verbs, that I have with French, lol. Things to work on. Language will come, but it's definitely the main focus of PST and I actually find myself sad and annoyed days that we only have one language class. I definitely wouldn't have predicted that at the start of PST! I'm such a nerd, haha.

We've also started to getmore into our subject/technical fields, which is exciting. I will try and post soon about my daily life and more on the health tech classes, but that may be another few days.

Thanks for the mail, prayers, emails, good thoughts, etc. I miss and love you all!