A Call for Post Requests

So lately I'm at once torn between not knowing what to write yet feeling compelled to, but also acknowledging that half my posts are boring general updates and not necessarily anything educational/entertaining about life in Senegal. Hence I am once again putting out the call for requests of things to write about...I'll take any and all suggestions and try to write about them as they relate to life here. Anything that you want to know about as it relates to Senegal, PCV life, whatever, and I will do my best to entertain those requests.

Btw I know my time is getting short, but if anyone is interested in visiting Senegal and hanging with a temporary local who speaks multiple languages on a daily basis, I would LOVE to have you come and experience my life and see the country. Come on, you know you want to... :)

Girls' Leadership Day Djilor Style

This past Monday, the Peace Corps Cross Culture and Homestay Coordinator Awa Traore (with whom I work with whenever I am in Thies) came to talk with selected girls from the middle schools in Djilor and Sadioga where I work. In total, 30 girls were chosen by their teachers to participate: 20 from Djilor (a school with about 1,000 students between the middle and high schools) and 10 from Sadioga (middle school student enrollment around 400), based on their academic achievements, motivation, and ability to serve as leaders among their classmates.



The overall theme of the day was focused at keeping girls in school, which was done through conversations about self-confidence, friendship, and knowing oneself, as well as discussing the problems of rape, early/forced marriage, and early/unwanted pregnancy, and how they impact girls in the community.



It was a great day and Awa really got the girls thinking, talking, and sharing. I think the selected faculty members on hand also learned a lot, especially about the problems facing female students today. One faculty member in particular from Djilor was surprised to discover that rape is a big issue among middle school students in the area. Conversations on these sensitive topics got both the girls and faculty members talking and I hope that the greater community will in turn benefit from the day.



Hopefully Monday will be the first in a series of trainings specifically aimed at keeping girls in school through improved leadership, greater self-confidence, reduced rate of unwanted pregnancy, and improved access to education. The next training will hopefully be a several day reproductive health training for students and teachers to lead classes at their respective schools in January, A feelanga Roog.

Your friendly local Peace Corps team: Chris (Moustapha), Me (Khady), Awa, Jessica (a fellow Kaolack Region PCV who organized the tourney), and Mamadou the chauffer.

More pictures and a video (in Wolof, sorry!) are available at http://picasaweb.google.com/pcbeth

Rando Greetings from Dakar

I just wanted to send a major thanks to the supportive words so many people have shared about George. My village and I really appreciate it.

As my parents noticed, I updated my picasa website, so check out what's been going on (though most are scenes of my backyard and other random things).

I've been in Dakar the last week, after a week in Thies for the end of PST (yay 52 new Senegal PCVs!), visiting with Med (multiple weird skin infections and eye issues) and trying to really delve into grad school and post-PC life options. I am almost done with the antibiotics and have new lenses for my "fun" glasses, as it turns out my vision has actually improved since coming to Senegal. Turns out the headaches were from my eyes correcting the "over-correctedness" of my original lenses. Of course, my hard-core village glass lenses haven't been changed, so I guess I will have to bench them for awhile. Anyway, I'm head back to Kaolack/the village tomorrow.

Over the next few weeks, work will really be picking up again. I am planning an awesome Girls' Leadership Day in early November for middle school girls, plus I am trying to get together materials and write a grant for a reproductive health training in December/January. Chris and I have reached a critical point in the Serere Dictionary, where we now need to take what we have and share it with members of our villages to verify words/sounds/spellings. Oh, and gardening season is starting up so I really need to prepare pepiniere space. Plus, I have two new neighbors (yay Jack and David!) to visit and a bunch of other random stuff... so much for the slow season of August and September (which I honestly LOVED). AND I need to finish and send in my applications for grad school! [Holy cow, I had forgotten how overwhelming applying for school is. Now multiply that by 300 and you will almost understand what it's like to apply without regular internet access or printing capabilities.] It will all be good and time is really going to fly by over the next six months before I COS (Close of Service).

Miss you and love you all!

Death in the Village

So for various reasons, I’ve been avoiding updating this blog. Since the Kaolack House moved to its new location (natural light, ooo!) a month ago, I have not had much internet access for work or communication, so that has made the rare and precious time online even more so. But more than the lack of internet access, there is a blog entry that I’ve been dreading posting, but need to, because it was a HUGE event in my village and my service. And it revolves around an old man who a fellow female PCV once tried to sell me to for 4 cows (not enough to me and too much for him—she was just KIDDING!). I call him George.

I started writing this blog about three weeks ago, so it’s kind of out of date, sorry.

I’ll be honest, the last week and a half has been tough—downright hard. Not for anything like getting used to life again or a lot of work or cultural adjustment or anything like that. No, this week was tough in a way that has shown me just how difficult it will be to leave my village in 8 months, because of the real bonds and friendships I’ve made with the people around me. George passed away. “George” was the name I gave to the oldest man in my compound/ village, and he was convinced I was his third wife. I *believe* George was 93 years old, but realistically, he could have been any age from 80-95. He had told me 90 and 93 on separate occasions and while I never asked him to show me his birth certificate (if he even has one…he was already in his 40s when Senegal was granted independence in the early 1960s), from some of his stories, I believe he was actually THAT old. George’s real name is Mordou Gning, or because of his age to show respect Mame Mordou Gning, but I early on in my PC service gave him the name “George” after he insisted on calling me Fatou Mae after the mother of his second wife, Ndiaye Senghor. Over a year ago, the entire village thought it quite funny that this young white girl who barely spoke Serere would be bold enough to change the name of the oldest and most-respected man in the village just because he wouldn’t call her by her proper Senegalese name. A few people caught on that the US President at that time was named George too, but they didn’t really get the irony in it. In all honesty, it was the first “generic American” name that popped into my head and it stuck. And so our relationship started…

The first few months of my PC service (after Installation) were spent sitting next to George in our compound and arguing with him. My early vocabulary was comprised mostly of different ways to say “I don’t like you” and why to all of his professions of love for me and his desire for me to marry him. Up until even the night before his stroke, George was proposing and insisting I accept and be his wife. Not a chance, sorry George, you are my grandfather and much too old for me, plus you are old and don’t have enough money to pay back my student loans (I always got a laugh from those around me with this comment), which I constantly told him.

A few posts ago I referred to the gifts I brought back from America, including a thick long-sleeved shirt of Dad’s, which I gave to George. I may as well have given him a solid gold cow or my first born child for his excitement about this old shirt. Putting it on right away and wearing it for the first three days I was back in the village after my US vacay, George made sure that the ENTIRE village knew that I gave him such a nice shirt as it was “an obvious profession of my love for him.”

George was a good Muslim in every sense of the word: he prayed 5 times a day, he gave to the poor, and he fasted (no food or water 6am-7:30pm) during Ramadan (even though the elderly are let off from fasting, which I reminded him of every time someone commented to me about him fasting). So the day I left for Dakar back in September, George had a stroke. It was no doubt brought on by fasting—well, and age. While I was gone, no one told me anything about the stroke—nothing at all. Probably because of the fatalist aspect of culture here, but still, it annoyed me. I left Kaolack Friday morning after the house move and almost two full weeks away from the village in Dakar and Kolda, eager to be back to tackle the mold that of course took over my hut and enjoy life in a place where I could communicate with people again (Kolda is mostly Pulaar, so I didn’t really know what was going on). After stopping off in Djilor, I wanted to check in on a youth citizenship camp, but Mary and I both decided we were too exhausted to stay the afternoon and decided to trek back to our respective sites, even though it was around 1:30pm. Shortly after getting back to my hut, it started raining and didn’t stop until around 9pm that night. I cleaned, organized my stuff, and debated whether or not to wait until after the rain before greeting and passing out the gifts of tea and dates (in celebration of the end of Ramadan), but decided that since it was light rain, I should just go ahead and do it. That’s when things changed.

I walked up to the door of George’s room, knocked and started teasing/greeting him as usual as I walked into his room, but not to the normal response. I looked in and realized something was not right—and my sister Njira was right on my heels. She told me he was sick—obvious signs of facial paralysis and confusion in his eyes, he couldn’t see well, and could barely hear. He was scary skinny, his hip bone sticking up from his bed as he laid on his side facing the door. No duh he’s sick. We tried to talk with Njira translating for both of us, unable to really understand the other. I gave him the dates and tea, which seemed pointless, but he thanked me and called me a great person and asked me to sit. So I did. I sat for about 5 or 10 minutes, thinking about what happened and wondering who I could contact who would know what to do to help a person recover from a stroke. The private doctor from Djilor had been by a few times to give George an IV and meds, but George has always been freaked out by needles, or so I was told. After sitting a bit, I got up, telling him I needed to go take a bucket bath. The last words he spoke to me were “Reti bogoox,” or “Go, bathe!” [To those who knew me in my Group Workcamps days, this is quite a fitting phrase…]

Around 8, I was called to dinner by my 8 year old sister, saying as she had for the past year and a half “Mame Mordou says to come and have dinner.” Out of habit, having briefly forgotten about the stroke, I walked into his room where several of his grand children and myself usually eat meals with him, but I was quickly brought back to reality. George was turned over on his other side and as tried to greet him, he barely looked at me. He looked in severe heart-breaking pain. Ndiaye was waving a hand fan on him and Njira was trying to give him some pain medication and I felt like I was intruding on a private, painful moment, and left as I was summoned into the hallway to eat dinner there instead.

He passed minutes later, but no one in the family was told until after 9:30 that night. As I went to my room praying for his healing, I didn’t realize that God had already taken care of it. No, when I ran out of my room at 9:30 or so, running from the army of cockroaches that had taken up all corners of my latrine and making using it impossible, begging the other side of the family to buy cockroach killer for me at the market the next day, I had no clue. I thought it was crazy that when I handed them money for the poison, they weren’t sure if they were going to the market the next day or not. But I didn’t know. In fact, my brother Ibou (one of George’s oldest sons) specifically waited to tell everyone so that he could call relatives in Dakar (he spent all night on the phone and a ton of phone credit notifying people) and they could arrive in our village the next morning in time for the funeral. In Islam, the burial is supposed to happen almost immediately after the person passes on. The body is ceremonially washed and wrapped in white cloth and taken to the mosque and cemetery, but no preservatives or anything are used. Ibou was so good at this in fact, that a Dakar relative then called a different relative in my village to let them know they were coming because of the funeral, and the person in my village was all “George died?” Ibou didn’t tell the village until the 5am call-to-prayer marking the last day of Ramadan.

From my journal,

“I woke up around 7:15 to sweeping outside my hut and Rhoky knocking to tell me the sad news. I was shocked, and thankful that he didn’t have to suffer anymore—not to mention extremely grateful that I had (barely) made it back. I quickly changed, brushed up on my Serere condolences and grabbed a 5mille note to go pay my respects to Mame Dibbor, his 1^st wife/widow…then I basically stood/sat around for several hours, in shock and unsure about what to do…A crowd quickly started to gather as relatives from Djilor, Gague, and Dakar arrived, plus others from Ndiomdy. It was tragically sad as people walked in with red eyes, crying, or even wailing.”

(back in real time, aka October 16)

The elders of the village washed and clothed the body in the traditional white fabric as HUNDREDS of people from all of the surrounding villages showed up throughout the morning (as many as 1000people that day and hundreds more in the following days). Sitting mats, benches, and a large picnic tent were set up to accommodate the mourners as men started praying. I sat around, mostly silent, as people came in. Many were surprised I was back so quickly (most not having seen me the day before) and then looked visibly relieved when they heard that I had seen and talked with George before his passing. A little before noon, the body was brought out (covered) and the tears flowed as the men of the village accompanied the body to the mosque and the cemetery for burial. It was quite emotional and I don’t really have words for it, even now. After the body was buried, everyone returned and the men circled up and spent the next 2 or so hours talking about George and all of the good he did in his life. The people he helped, the families without food he shared with, the grandchildren he supported through school when their father wouldn’t buy them new clothes or take them to the doctor, and the work he did as a store owner, cowherd (walked across Senegal MANY many times), President of the Communaute Rurale, and farmer.

Oh, this all happened the day before Korite (the celebration for the end of Ramadan), so Korite was pretty lame as the village was still in morning. For George’s passing, one of his cows was brought (since George couldn’t really walk, he had a Pulaar family outside our village watch his heards) and sacrificed, then the meat divided up and distributed among the whole village, so Ndiomdy ate beef for Korite. But otherwise it was a lame end-of-Ramadan. The day after Ramadan, another 500 or so people came through and in the week following (and the month too…) visitors from across the country have come to share their condolences. The village will be in morning for some time as we get used to life without George.

George, an old man who as much as he would irritate me with his constant marriage proposals, was also one of the most alert and understanding people in my village, in terms of his understanding of my work. He would constantly ask me about projects I would mention (including constantly harassing me to get him his own private latrine behind his room back in May) and also harass me about all of my work and the fact that I never took time to rest. I know that he enjoyed the two weeks between coming back from my US vacay and going to Dakar because I sat around our compound rather than constantly being on the go. He took care of me (I think my eating with him and his grandkids was because he thought I couldn’t get my fair share eating in the chaos of the rest of my family) and made sure I took care of myself.

I know sometimes they say someone who is dying may wait a bit for something or someone before they feel like they can properly move on to the next life. I don’t know if it’s true, but I like to think it is. MANY people in my village said that George waited until I came back before he gave in and let God take him back; that George wanted a final few words—maybe that he even hoped I would finally accept his proposal. All I can hope is that my simple gifts of the shirt in August and the dates and tea (a big Senegalese tradition) were enough to let him know I care. I miss him, and I was very hard to hear my friend Seynabou (and others…) say to me, “George left you [me],” but it’s true. The village is sad, I’m sad, and they know and understand how sad I am. They have found their way into my heart and I think I have found my way into their’s.

O kiin a paax a ref'u, yasam Roog malaka paax a ngetwin.

He was a good man and may God keep him in Paradise.

---------------------------------------

Thanks and sorry for this being long-winded and kind of nonsensical and sentimental. Hopefully there will my a more upbeat and light-hearted post next time around.

really quick update

Hi Everyone! I'm back in Kaolack, but only overnight. I really just came to grab my computer and head back to site again, with barely even a chance to check my email (of the 60 in my inbox, I read maybe 7, all from you guys though!). It was a rough week and a half at site, for many reasons, but that post will have to wait another few weeks. It's mostly written but this connection is too slow for it to be of much use...

Anyways, I'm alive and apart from my itchy pre-Dakar spots returning the moment I returned to my site, and mold taking over almost everything in my hut, I'm doing well and thinking ahead about the last 7 or 8 months I have here in Senegal. The Rainy Season is ending, school is starting in a few weeks (Inchallah), and work is picking up again, so I'm trying to figure out the best use of my time here. Our internet hasn't gotten set up again since moving to a new Kaolack House, but hopefully soon because I have a ton of stuff to take care of (PC work, updates, grad school, etc).

Ok, that's all. More later, I promise! Love and miss you all!

quick update

So...

It was really good finally going back to the village after over a month away. My family and friends in the village LOVED their gifts. Of everything, the pictures were the most widely appreciated and shared among everyone. There's still a few more that I'm trying to distribute around. The tshirts were also a big hit. George (93 year old man) LOVES his long-sleeved shirt from Dad--seriously, he has made it known throughout the village that I love him because I brought him back such a nice and beautiful shirt. It's actually quite amusing seeing my brothers and sisters wearing their shirts--including Group Workcamps Red Shirts (I know I wasn't "supposed" to give those away, but I have tons of them), my Cheerleaders Kick shirt from freshman year of high school, and the "Be Kind to Animals and Kiss a Flute Player" shirt. My sisters also liked their gold earrings (yea Claire's!) and their nailpolish (technically a no-no in Islam, especially during Ramadan, so they are waiting until after and will then wear it on their left hands). The kids have put on the nail polish and my dad marked one of his chickens with some bright red polish. Yep... The young girls loved their bracelet making kits I put together from old jewelry kits from when I was young and the boys loved their little sports balls, plus my brothers loved the Chicago Bulls playing cards I picked up last minute at O'Hare Airport. The little babies liked the stuffed animals (or so I hope), but really it was the photos. And the candy! Holy cow, they LOVED the Skittles and the Starbursts! Seriously, American candy ("whoa, it's sweet!") blows their minds. It was really fun sitting around the compound in the evening after having my sister distribute the candy for me and smelling the Skittle breath as they all tried to figure out how to best open the bag, pronounce the name "Skittles" and pointing out the "S" on each little candy, and figure out the flavors. The same happened at Sally's compound when I brought the Starbursts--I ran out the night before Ramadan started to make sure they had their candy before fasting insanity started--and it was fun. I remember when I first became a health PCV I was all "I'm never going to bring my family candy--just fruits and veggies!" Then I realized how disgusting Senegalese village candy (a spicy mint thing... or cherry cough drops) is and how much joy they get from fruity delicious imported stuff. Yea, blame me for rotting their teeth or undermining local industry. Bad health Volunteer I am...:)

Anyways, the gifts went over well. One of my sisters had prepared my hut prior to my arrival, sweeping, making my bed (did not ask her to, but still nice), and evicting a mouse family, plus preparing my backyard for my brothers to weed the massive (6ft+) weeds that had taken over. Unfortunately, my brothers were over-zealous and also weedwacked two of my new trees, but I replanted and am moving on. I was glad I had arranged with my sister Ami to prepare my hut because it was dark by the time I arrived in my village and had I not, it would have been a DISASTER. The first few days back were spent cleaning, washing mold that had grown on just about everything I own, and visiting people in the village. Everyone was glad I was back, said that "America was good to you" (meaning I looked like I had gained a little weight) and was happy I had seen family and friends. And of course they asked when Katie (or anyone) will come and visit (seriously Sissy, come and visit!).

It was a really good, though kind of dull and not super exciting, two and a half weeks in the village. Though I wanted a chance to check my email, I actually wasn't quite ready to leave the village (I was REALLY enjoying reading and doing sudoku puzzles, evidently), even to do a little traveling around Senegal. I'm trying to get to Tamba/Kolda to visit the PCVs in that part of the country, including one of my best friends here, but am instead hanging out in the med hut in Dakar with some fun rash, hoping the A/C (and meds) can clear it up. I'm just delayed on my travels a few days and since not much is going on, it's giving me a chance to catch up on email and computer work, as well as fruit consumption (!) and the most recent season of the Amazing Race which someone had downloaded, yay!

Miss y'all!

Also, pictures from the last few weeks are uploaded and updated on Picasa. Check 'em out!

If I had Twitter…

(written while I was in the village)

So normally I’m extremely against Twitter (insert comment about its creepiness/voyeuristic/self-indulgent, etc here), but lately (probably because of all of the celebrity gossip magazines Jodi keeps me stocked with) I’ve been thinking of certain aspects of my life as a series of “Twits” (did I really just type that?) or Facebook updates (I know, I know…). I’ve recently found myself at a loss for blog ideas because I’ve basically “gotten over” some of the more minute (or more “interesting”) aspects of my life, which may or may not be of interest to you, my loyal reading public. J

So, over the next week or two, I will fake “Twit” while I have nothing “exciting” planned, to see what interesting things happen in my life.

Thursday, August 20, 5:15pm “What, has no one walked into the garden since I left? My tree nursery is totally overgrown and the weeds are taller than me! (or almost)”

6:50pm “Stupid football (soccer) players destroying my young mango trees. As much as I enjoy tree planting, I could never be an AgFo because I can’t stand knowing not all of my trees will survive.”

Friday, August 21, 11:15am “New addiction: Sudoku puzzles, shoot!” (I was temporarily out of desirable reading material)

3:23pm “Sowe (homemade yogurt—ie spoiled unpasturized milk) destroying me from the inside out…”

Saturday, August 22, 7:45am “First day of Ramadan and woken up at 5am not by the mosque call to prayer, but by an army of frogs in compound croaking away loudly. Happy fasting!”

7:30pm “I think I have bed bugs. Or clothes mites. Or both…so much itching!”

Sunday, August 23, 8:15am “Waiting for breakfast. Bro coming with milk straight from the cow—can’t wait! It's been two months since I’ve had milk and couscous!”

9:30am “I just killed my first scorpion (it was in my hut, behind my med kit) and found an empty condom wrapper outside my front door. My work here is done.”

4:45pm “Bethany’s bad idea of the week” trying to beat a big rainstorm…getting soaked as it starts pouring less than 1km outside of town and having to walk the 3+km barefoot back to my village, fording the river that my dirt road becomes during the rainy season. Umbrella not big enough. Soaked through and through."

5:10pm “Still walking barefoot in the rain. This is becoming comical. I really am the crazy laughing white girl of my area.”

5:35pm “Finally made it home. Brothers think it’s hysterical. ‘You’re wet.’ ‘No, I’m not wet at all, thank you very much.’ (sense sarcasm…)”

Monday, August 24, 8:40pm, “I just carried my dad on my back for the first time ever! Good thing I didn’t drop him!”

August 25 “Though they taste good, Starbursts are not actually real fruit…” (I went 12 days without eating any fruit at all!)

August 26? 8:28am “Why do I keep having a dream about being a new employee carrying around a trashcan at a giant movie theater? Oh mefloquin.”

8:04pm “When you pour fish juice on my foot, dinner’s over.”

August 27 “I hate being woken up at 3:40am by anything—be it mice in my hut or these spots all over my body itching like crazy.”

9:15am “What would I do without (raw) milk and millet during Ramadan?”

10:45am “Bethany is counting down the days ‘til she can burn her old underwear for COS.”

4:10pm, “So glad I liver near a river, this is awesome!” (spent the day working, relaxing, and swimming at the river)

8:10pm “Mm chicken here is soooo good! (beans too!)”

August 28, 9:53pm “Bethany thinks more of her friends should figure out skype and/or international texting. It’s really not that hard and then I could hear from people more often. Hint hint. J “

10:44pm “When you keep totally screwing up the sudoku with incorrect answers, it’s time to turn off the headlamp and go to bed.”

August 29, 11:23am “Weeding a rice field is what I imagine mowing the lawn is, without a lawnmower.” (see pictures on Picasa)

August 30, 2:57pm “I would kill for a cold drink right now…”

Well, even looking back over these “Twits” and random comments, my past two weeks really have not been very interesting at all, oh well. Work-wise, I’m at a fake temporary work lull as I’ve been calling it. I’ve been outplanting most of the remaining trees from my tree nursery and doing a lot of weeding, but nothing much else. People are in the fields and fasting for Ramadan, so no one is around and when they are, energy is extremely low. School is on summer break for another month and a half. I have some project evaluations to do, as well as grant-writing and event planning for future activities, but I have to talk to some people here in order to totally finish them. I have a village survey to do for PC, but I don’t have the questions and no one is around right now to talk to for the answers, which also means no one has time for health talks, etc. Everything else is computer work, like the Serere dictionary. It’s ok, I’m enjoying this downtime, riding, doing Sudoku, and whatnot. I need to enjoy it while it lasts, I can already tell the next few weeks and months will quickly fill up and I only have 8 months left here!

P.S. Anyone, anyone at all, interesting in coming to visit me here? Come on, ya know you want to J