Pics

With the fam: Codou, Me, Moussa

(full photo shoot available on my picture website)

Me and my bro Ameth--he's a science and math teacher in a nearby village
Oumi and I
Watching the Olympics on our last day of training, I think it was an intense track event that the US won...
Typical lunch at the center: rice with meat/fish in huge bowls
My village family would probably fit 20+ people around a bowl this size. At the Center, we average 3-5...

I’m an Aunt!!!! (again)

Haha, Katie don’t kill me, I’m only kidding. Well, not really. I have a newborn nephew. I just found out that my 22-year old sister in the village gave birth to a son last Tuesday. I talked to my family twice in the past week and did anyone mention this? No, of course not. It’s evidently not news. I found out from one of the teachers who lives in Dakar right now, today when she called me this morning after I texted her telling her I was in her city. Sadly, I am missing the baptism which I believe is today and is also when the baby will receive his name. I was hoping for a girl because of the 4 babies in my compound right now, 3 are boys, but I’m just glad that they are both fine. I was hoping to be around for the birth as well as the baptism, but I don’t doubt that one of my many fertile sisters in the village will get pregnant and deliver in the next year and a half, though we will see.

Anyway... Greetings once again from Dakar! I’m here for a mixture of med appointment and SENEGAD (Senegal’s Gender and Development Program) meeting, after finishing IST on Saturday. Dakar is full of PCVs right now bc there is an Environmental Ed conference, COS conference (for those finishing their service in the next few months), plus SENEGAD meetings. Most of my stage came here together after going down to Mbour for a day on the beach Saturday. Many Vols have new Dakar homestays with ExPats, but I didn’t get one and am staying in the Med Hut bc of my appointment and the fact that a cold decided to be kind enough to visit me from Saturday afternoon on.

IST is now over, which is really crazy. We are not just official sworn-in Vols (we were that in May), but now we are just 2.5 weeks away from being PC Sophomores as the next Stage arrives in country September 11 (really, ndigil ndigil?). Yea, unbelievably my Stage has been here 5.5 months, which seems crazy—time has both flown and dragged (ie neverending hot days in the village). To any future PC Senegal trainees out there, welcome! Get excited bc this will be the most exciting, insane, amazing, and generally ridiculous 2+ years of your life, or at least mine is going that way already… Get over yourselves before coming here and be prepared to learn to laugh at yourself, otherwise you won’t survive. Oh, and eat a lot of good food (fruits, veggies, dairy, coffee!) before you come here, just a suggestion.

I’m coming out of IST with some basic Wolof skills, which is fab, even though I found I wasn’t super excited to learn it (Serere pride I guess), but it’s nice to be able to understand a little more of what is going on around me. I also learned practical skills like gardening, murals and visual aids, porridge making, and creating new and innovative lesson plans to help the teachers teach health and environmental-related classes in the elementary and middle schools. We also heard from different NGOs and US development programs, discussing their work in different parts of the country (very few health-related programs exist in the Delta, which is dumb but maybe we can change that...) and how we as Vols can collaborate with them on projects and work more efficiently. The whole IST was a mixture of empowering (yes! Ideas! I can really do this!) and overwhelming (shoot, where do I even start?!) at once. Thankfully, my APCD is going to go on tourney after Ramadan ends at the end of September, to every health and EE site, to meet with village leaders, and help them create a long-term Action Plan to address the problems and needs of the community. The Action Plan will serve as a guide for my priorities throughout my service and will carryover to the Volunteers that will replace me after my two years of service in the Delta. I’m really excited about this meeting, though it probably won’t happen until November because my APCD has a ton of sites across the country to visit. I feel like while I don’t know exactly how my work is going to start out, there are some potentially big events on the calendar for the next few months, which will make long village weeks much more tolerable.

On that note, I’m getting ready for a vacay, it’s needed. I’m not taking it right away, but am exploring the possibility of a trip to Europe in December or January and am putting out the call to any loved ones out there interested in meeting up with me somewhere—wherever it may be (Eastern/Western/Northern/Southern Europe, or even Morocco or Egypt). Many people from my Stage are planning vacations for that time as well, whether to other places in Africa, Europe, or the States (which I would do, but have already promised to come back next summer for various special events). It’s been forever it seems since I took a vacation and am thinking by then I will be about 9 or 10 mos in country and will need a breath of fresh air, even if I’m not sure exactly how I will afford it, but hopefully loans won’t have totally eaten away all of my personal money by then. A fellow Vol is planning on being in Paris during that time so I may plan it with her, but would love an opportunity to see anyone willing to make the trip. Please think about it and let me know if you are interested.

Well, this is a pretty long post. I will probably post once more before going to the village, but that’s all depending on internet reliability and power, so one never knows in this country. For those of you who have kindly sent mail my way, I’m headed to the post office next Tuesday (inshallah) to pick it up and hope the post people aren’t too angry with me or try and overcharge me for the fact I haven’t been there in a month, we’ll see. Also, thanks for the blog comments, I love checking them and am glad to see my family members are tackling the world of blogs. Heidi, my friends here are continually impressed by your use of haikus to comment. Way to be!

Sunday

It is a sunday inthise, which means all volunteers arecampedd out at the 3 cafes in townwith wierless, attempting to getstuf done,moe or less successully. less for me,however, i did, with the helpof marissa's computer, upload a bunch ofpics to my picassa album, so checkthem out!

trainingis goingwell. wolof isstarting to makesense, evenwith the melange of languages flooting through my head, english, french, serere, and now wolof. im really enjoying having a fixed schedule these few weeks, soi am not minding the long days and extrawork. not at all, though i may be aminority.

just one mor eweek of training left...then to dakar sunday for a meeting with other volunteers to giveout scholarships to girls for lycee for this coming school year. i will probably be backin thevillge next thursday or friday. then ramadan starts monday...yipee...

dad, yes,thetypos arefrom this crazy laptop. le pere de cru, "cru" and i just had a convo about how poorly this computer actuallyworks.

Maangiy dox

(I am walking, en wolof)

So we ar enow inweek 2 of IST and inmany ways it still feels like the fisrtweek, mainly bc the languageclasses started this week which also means that mostof the language tutors showed up for the first time since PST and the center feels like "normal." I started Wolof, which will become the 3rd foreign language I usein country. i am bsically learning it to better communicate wiht people outside of mysmall serere village. while i dont really want tolearn it right now, bci still dontknow serere perfectly, i recognize thatit will be a goodskill to have. alli really want to learn, however, is to convey basic ideas while shopping at the market and how to insult children/men in wolof when theyannoy me and theserere doesnt work9like when i am inkaolack). wolof is going ok and it is much easire thn serere grammtically speaking, howeve i am constantly mixing up serere words with wolof and remember how hard i twas to just start learning serere backin march too. that being said, iam still known aroundthe training center to most people as "serere oo,"rather than by my name, american or senegalese. as a serere, it basically meanstht anyone and eveyone willpick on and tease me at thecenter bc as one of twoserere speakers (and theres only a smallgroup of staffers who speak the language) i am in a smallminority. its okthough bc they only do it bc they knowi can take it and dish it back out too, lol. thatbeing said, if i had been assigned to another languge, i doubtiwould hve themerelationship wiht all of the taff that i have right now. as a fellow vol said thisweek, "who knew how much thelanguage you were assigned in the fisrt week in country would come to impact all ofyour interactions here?"

well, i am going togo now. i have wolof homeworkand it isgettingdark. the lightbulb inthe shower t myhomestay dosntwork anymore, so iam going tohaveto take a showerinthe pitch black, whether itake it tonight or wait until tomorro am before training. talk to you alllater and sorry for the typos and lack of spaes, this xo is weird...

Olympics

So the Olympics started this week. I absolutely love watching the Olympics and basically spend the 14 days with the TV constantly turned to NBC, or whoever happens to be airing them, and fully or partially paying attention to the different events. I realized it will be another 4 years before I get that chance again. You see, the next Olympics will be in 2010, winter, and unless the Winter Olympics aren't until May, I will still be in Senegal, and will thus have to wait until Summer 1212 to see friendly international competition aired 24/7. This being said, here in Thies, we are not totally cut off from this international event, thankfully. In fact, right as the lunch drum sounded on Friday, many of my fellow Vols were parked in front of the tv in the foyer of the training center. The program? Not wacky Senegalese wrestling or soccer or even Coeur de Peche (a ridiculous Brazilian soap opera dubbed in French and on tv almost every night). No, it was the Opening Ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics! A few people even brought a lunch bowl into the foyer to watch the crazy lights and girl flying from a kite, though most of us just returned to the foyer after we were finished with our maffe and rice. We returned and didn't leave for an hour and a half... Now, to be fair, there was a point to our lengthy watching...we were waiting for the US and Senegal, our two countries (though some claim Canada, Ethiopia, and Ireland as well), to walk their athletes across the arena. So we waited. And waited. And waited, all the while making comments (see Alexis' blog for some fab quotes) about the athletes of large and small countries alike, commenting on costume, size, appearance, names, anything to occupy the time. (That, and acknowledging how great they all look while we look varying degrees of sickly...jk!) After an hour, the US finally shows up, looking slightly like sailors, but it brought a cheer across the room, filling us all with pride and amazement at the sheer size of the US Olympic team. But that wasn't enough...we needed to see Senegal. The drum for class came and went, until we were all over 30 minutes late to our afternoon session. Where was Senegal? No clue. Trainers came and went until Demba finally unplugged the TV and forced us all to class. Apparently the Olympic spirit doesn't carry all of the way over here, because our trainers called us silly for wanting to see the Senegalese team walk across the arena, in whatever costume was chosen for them (we all hoped for some wax and crazy Pulaar pants!).

Then again, it is hard to justify the importance of the Olympics in a country where the majority of the population has to worry about whether or not the impending harvest will be adequate enough to feed their families.

I love the Olympics, but this was just a thought brought up by another Vol when a family member back in the States asked about Olympics excitement over here.

Thies time

Quick note from IST in Thies...

Coup today in Mauritania, no probs here though PCSenegal is monitoring things. There hasnt been any violence, so things are relatively calm, just a little exciting, lol.

Danny G, yes that is the correct address.


So I am using my weidr XO laptop that sadly wont letme upload pictuers or anything like that. Lameness. At some point, I will once again update pictures again. Someday...

Training going well and its fab to see everyone from my Stage again. Sorry to keep this so short and lame, but I needto gethome now. Hope everyoneis enjoying the start of August!