Kira Day

It’s not very often that it happens: that I get so stressed out that I don’t know what to do with myself. Life in Senegal is stressful… have I ever mentioned that before? And that sometimes when everything doesn’t really go how I want it to, I get upset. I am normally good at finding a solution, but sometimes it just gets to be too much to handle – so today is the second time in Senegal that I have declared it Kira Day. Mel Moye – you used to take the day off in school and call in to work sick and it inspired me here. I am taking the day off to do whatever I want.

I can now explain what has stressed me out and what I am going to do about it: Holidays, my composting project and the Mara Family.

The holidays are hard abroad. I can’t do a single thing that will make Senegal feel like Neenah, Wisconsin. 5 friends and I rented a house on the island Gorée, and had called ahead to make sure it had an oven available. We did all of our grocery shopping the morning before the ferry and had quite the impressive menu decided (pineapple glazed ham, green bean casserole, potatoes au gratin, Christmas cookies). But upon arriving, we found out the oven was there, in the kitchen, but didn’t work. So we ended up using the owner’s sister’s house. But she is Catholic and was planning her own Christmas meal and we felt awful making her run back and forth. People weren’t happy with us and let us know it. But I was very happy to just sit on the rocks, listening to the waves roll in alone, wearing blue jeans, a fleece and my new favorite Santa hat. It was chilly. Too bad I didn’t get tan lines. Dinner was alright, but what came after dinner was better. My friend’s boyfriend is here visiting and he brought us some pretty tasty drinks!

After the island, I came back here to Bambey with Erin. She is a close friend that lives very far away. So since she wasn’t able to go home between Gorée and New Year’s, she came here and I wanted to show her my compost site. I wanted to check and see if any collection had been done in the last few days anyways. But as we showed up, I noticed that people were at the site. Keep in mind, the government gave us a plot of land but we haven’t yet put up a fence of any kind. The people we noticed were actually stealing our compost. I asked them what they were doing and explained the situation. He was willing to buy it “tomorrow, inchallah”. So I call my women’s group pres but of course she wasn’t home and told me to handle it. No. Not going to happen. So I told this villager to go and talk to Djebaye, the donkey-cart guy, who hopefully won’t just pocket the money, but there is no way for me to control that.

I was stressed and talking it through with Erin on what to do. We decided that I just needed to talk to my group and explain my role better since they call me their boss and expect too much from me; and that we should sell the compost then to this villager pretty cheap to get some initial funds to start fencing.

So the next morning we both went to talk to Astou Kan, the pres, and our talk combined with the stress of everything going on just made me cry. She told me that they are hoping to get a loan for community projects from some Eco-Village in Diourbel and when I said it would be great to use that money for this project, she said “that won’t work since it doesn’t provide income so how could we pay back the loan”. BUT IT DOES! Just not today. “It makes sense to give the money to the women of the group for them each to raise their own money so that they can afford to pay for other things, like garbage cans and collection fees”. But honestly, these individual projects never work. Interest rates are too much to handle for people that don’t even know how to figure out if their project is making profits or not.

There is a meeting on Jan 12, inchallah, to hand out 10 garbage cans that Astou Kan’s brother fronted money for to start 10 example families. We will have all the women put some money in to buy fencing for the compost site, and this has been the plan since before Tabaski, but Astou Kan just first told me yesterday that the women won’t be able to put in more than 200cfa each, all 14 or 15 of them, making it 3000cfa if everyone shows, and pays: just over $5. How the hell can we fence in 30 square meters with $5?! We can’t.

So mid-tears yesterday, we talked about all the people I need to see and invite to our meeting Jan 12. I have to write up and print invites and hand them out to all the businesses in Bambey that could possibly donate money or materials toward the project. The more I think about it, the more I realize that I should get out of my room and start working on this list. No. It’s Kira Day. I will be back from Ziguanchor on the 5th and I will work then. Today, it’s my day and no one can mess with that.

And the third most stressful situation is my family. Not in America, alhumdulilaye; they are all happy with the new Wii playing with the dogs in the snow. But my Mara family: I have a bad maid, a stuck-up 16 year old sister, a mom who doesn’t understand me and a yapping, scared, energetic dog, who brings me more stress than anyone else. The maid, whatever, is fine, just not Kolé, our last maid. My sister and mom, I guess I can’t complain too much but I just like my real parents and brother more. The dog though! She has been tied up in a dark room all her life. I have been the only person that pets her, teaches her to sit on command, and removes her from this dark room. We let her out but then she just starts barking at everyone unless I am around. I don’t want this. No one knows what to do with dogs since everyone is afraid of them and thus, she is afraid of them. If I train her, provide for her and improve her life, I will have to bring her back to America with me and that is just not going to happen. Last night, while on the phone with America, she was barking non-stop so I went to see what the problem was. A friend of my sister’s was just standing there, watching her bark, teasing her. I don’t even know this girl but I yelled at her and made her leave the compound and close the door. Then my sister and her 3 friends laughed at me, since I care that the dog is scared, barking, annoying the entire neighborhood. “Crazy toubab” is not what I want to deal with in my own home.

So what am I going to do about all this? Stay in my room, do yoga, go to the post office, meet Nick (the best boyfriend in the world) online and relax. Tomorrow, I am getting back to Dakar to take a ferry south to Ziguanchor for New Year’s. I will be fine. I have responsibilities here. I have made a commitment to these people to stay here for 2 years to work on their development. I will invite everyone I need to, to my meeting. I will pass out garbage cans and motivate everyone in the neighborhood to clean up. I will get rid of this dog somehow. I will have fun at Zig before I have to stop drinking in a week or so and celebrate New Years the best way I know how! No one said living here would be easy: “Hardest 2 years you will ever love” is the Peace Corps recruitment phrase. Yesterday was hard. But I know I will love it again some day. If I ran away from this and ETed, it would be like quitting my dream job after a bad day.

Happy Kira Day. You can celebrate how ever you want!