My last afternoon in the village, waiting for people to show up for the dance party. (Holding my father James and his mother Seynabou is sitting next to us, wearing a dress I had just given her.)
Anyway...
I left the village on April 22, in a terribly emotional day. The day before, that Wednesday, my supervisor Mamadou came to visit in what was my most chaotic day at site ever. Tuesday night, I had been up until 12:30am with my sisters and Seynabou, while she put a beautiful henna design on my feet (which like an idiot, knew I should take pictures of, and just never did). I woke up at 6:30 so she could take off the henna mixture and re-wrap my feet with an ash-mixture that would turn the henna from orange/red to black on my feet. I had to sit in my hut for an hour while the blackening mixture set, and then I ran over to the school as fast as I possibly could, as class was starting at 8am.
-
Along with the students, the teachers and I were supposed to seed the tree nursery as part of a class lesson, but Mamadou showed up an hour earlier than expected, just as we were getting ready. He wanted to chat about my work and thoughts, take a tour of the two gardens I helped set up, and enjoy a few rounds of tea. When he left two hours later, the students were in math class and I was told to come back in another hour, and they would plant right after the morning break. I showed up during break, armed with possessions I was gifting to the teachers, only to have them JUST then realize that it was my LAST day. Evelyn, one of my good friends, said as I gave her a candle "no Khady, you have to save this for your last day..." "But it is," I said. Uhoh.
Really? Where had they been the past month that the whole village (and the school director) knew I was leaving the next day, but not the rest of the teachers? Even my good friend Evelyn (she and I connected on being the only Catholics in Ndiomdy)? Ridiculous. The students knew, their parents knew, but the teachers somehow missed it, even in spite of all of my insisting that we had to plant the tree seeds in early April since I was leaving (but they still kept rescheduling, grr). They started protesting, talking about how they had wanted the students to do some type of special performance or ceremony to thank me, and how they wanted to make me a nice meal, etc. I was too annoyed and in shock that they hadn't realized it, all the while just wanting to get the tree nursery seeded so I could get on with my day.
-
As the morning break was ending, an ENORMOUS dust storm picked up and wouldn't quit. The students were eventually sent home since the teachers couldn't hold class in the storm (try teaching in stick classrooms or rooms with tin roofs in the middle of a dust storm, it sucks), which meant no seeding...so I dragged all four teachers out to the garden in the storm for a lesson on seed planting. [Note: in March, I sat down with the teachers and planned out when we would fill tree sacks with dirt and then seed them because I was leaving in mid-April. Then when the schedule kept being pushed back, I kept reminding them that we had a tight schedule because I was leaving soon. As my departure came closer and closer, I had a sinking feeling that I would NOT be around to watch them seed the tree nursery and I was correct. Failure. Hopefully, something that they seeded grew and will be successfully outplanted, but I'm not holding my breath.]
-
After the busted lesson at the school, I hurried back across my village for the 6th time, absolutely exhausted emotionally and physically, all before 12 noon.
The entire afternoon was spent frantically packing up and giving away everything left in my hut (though Mamadou had already taken all of the stuff I was keeping into Kaolack and up to Dakar). As I was standing in the chaos that remained quickly getting overwhelmed, my host dad or other family members would come by and sit with me (mostly in silence or with me making awkward and stressed conversation), until I had formed a small crowd, I would give them various possessions and clear out my hut for another 5 minutes until the crowd would form again. Yes, it was stressful to have people just sitting there and staring at me while I was trying to pack, but I also really appreciated it because I wanted to spend the day enjoying time with my village and was not able to otherwise. I used many of the children from my compound as messangers, sending them into the village with trunks, buckets, clothes, and other things to give to specific people. Dear village friends and family members would show up with bowls full of peanuts and other presents, and sit for awhile as well. I had hoped to spend the day visiting everyone, saying goodbye, and enjoying quality village time. It was the opposite.
Dancing with Ami Diouf
-
In the evening, I dressed up in my finest Senegalese complete from last Tabaski, the women of and the village honored me by holding a special drumming (called a mbud na in Serere or a sabaar in Wolof) right outside my hut. After watering in the garden, most of the women (and kids) in the village showed up and the dancing was INCROYABLE! The women sang songs about me, shared blessings and prayers for my journey back to America (and my family and especially that I would find a good husband upon my return). I danced with any woman who danced my way and really just tried to absorb as much love and appreciation as I could (and took lots of pictures and videos, thanks to Mary). I recorded some of the songs they sang and now have to figure out how to get them off of my voice recorder and onto a digital computer file I can put online. The songs were sweet and all about me and the work I did, especially the women's garden. They women presented me with over $50 in presents (a big deal there), including TONS of cashews, roasted peanuts, and raw peanuts to bring back to America. Three times they tried to end the drumming and dancing, only for the celebration to continue and eventually the dancing and drumming wound up in my crowded and cluttered hut.
As the celebration with the women was ending, my phone kept ringing and it was Evelyn demanding I come for dinner. They also sent my sister, Ndeye, who is also their cook, to fetch me and bring me to their house. The teachers (well, Ndeye) cooked a fancy dinner and demanded I come (which sadly took me away from my last dinner of millet in the village), where they also formally thanked me for my work with the school (and demanded/requested that I not "forget" about them, ie that I find them "a partner school" to work with them), expressed their disappointment that I was leaving so soon, and make arrangements to send me a gift in Dakar before I flew out (they said that they wanted to do something with the students for me, but because they didn't know...). After dinner, I rushed back home, spent a few hours with my family, having them record messages and greetings for my American family, chatting about Senegalese cooking as well as my departure ("what?! Peace Corps won't come and pick you up? You have to take a bus into Kaolack?!!") and then stayed up late finishing packing my 20+ kg (over 40lbs!) of peanut products and organizing the last few gifts for my family (bracelets for my sisters, buckets, prenatal vitamins, etc).
The crowd the morning I left...not happy people (just look at Seynabou's pouty face)
-
I woke up early, passed out the last presents in silence, and as my family gathered outside of my hut on benches still left from the night before, was forced to say goodbye. A lot of people from the village had said they would be there to officially say goodbye, but in typical Senegal fashion since Senegalese hate saying goodbye, very few actually came by, which I understood. I burst into tears as I was given/gave the left hand (an insult in Senegalese society, normally given to insure that your guest returns to "repay" the insult) to my entire family, many of them started crying, and I got on the charett for my last ride out of the village. They kept telling me not to cry, but that only made it worse, for all of us.
The charette I rode out of town. I made them stop so I could take a picture of the termite mounds along the side of the road, then I took a picture of them. (My bro Coli is driving the charette and wiping his tears with his tshirt, cute)
-
After waiting in Djilor with my brother Coli and counterpart Ibou, saying goodbye to my other counterpart Farba and numerous other people (the Pulaar bread&chocolate guy, the hardware store owner, etc), the Alhum (bus) was finally full and ready to go. I burst into tears again as the driver made me get on the bus, as did both Coli and Ibou. [Actually, I was kind of proud of the fact that both of those guys cared so much about me that they were crying in the middle of Djilor--a big deal for Senegalese men!] The women on the bus saw me crying and started talking amongst themselves, all kind of uncomfortable about my tears.
-
Woman 1: "Why's she crying?"
Woman 2: "I think she's traveling, but she's sure crying a lot for a little trip."
Woman 3 (who somehow knew Coli and had been talking with him a little): "No, I think she's leaving leaving."
Woman 1: (very somber) "Oh." (to which I turned around and nodded and then they all started sharing prayers about a safe journey back, etc." Very sweet.)
-
Most of the trip into Kaolack was uneventful as I tried to stop crying and texted a few people. Getting into Kaolack though, was a little chaotic as there was a huge religious ceremony happening just outside of town, so traffic was INSANE and cabs were hard to find. One of the bus driver's apprentices helped me get my stuff (a backpack, a bucket full of peanuts, a GIANT plastic bag full of peanuts, and a pillow case full of peanuts) and helped me drag it around on our epic search for a cab to take me to the Kaolack House. It took like 20 minutes to find an empty car and get a reasonable price, but the driver wound up being a pretty nice guy who spoke Serere (and I relatively easily dodged his requests for a date, lol).
-
As soon as I got into the Kaolack House, I was greeted by some kids from the fall stage who shared homemade French Toast with me. I spent the rest of the morning repacking my bags and organizing my peanuts to give away to other people, so that I could send my huge hiking backpack up to Dakar as Mamadou came through from visiting other PCV sites. With the encouragement of the other Volunteers in the house, I spent the ENTIRE rest of the day watching Glee on the projector at the Kaolack House in an attempt to emotionally recover from the morning and gear up for my trip to Mali via bus the next day. [More about Mali in a future blog post next week or the week after, Inchallah.]
~~~~~
Whoo! And that was my last 36 or so hours in Ndiomdy! Sorry if that was a long, repetitive, and emotional posting, but oh well. I thought you guys should hear a little about what it's like to leave the village the last day. I didn't really write about my last few weeks or even month, as it really was a long process of leaving. Instead, I wrote about the chaos that always seems to follow me whenever I have to pack up and leave some place for a very long time.
