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!