I have now been to every regional house in Senegal! A friend of mine is COSing in the next few weeks and he had also never been to Kolda, (where Senegal is sandwiched between the Gambia and Guinea Bissau) so we decided to go for 2 nights. A group of people from the Dakar region went down there in October and had just about every breakdown in the book, taking them 12 hours. Pete and I lucked out, since it only took us 7! The next day, we woke up early and went to visit a friend’s site. She lives about 65k from Kolda, so we took transport for 50k and rode our bikes the remaining 15k. Honestly, the ride was very enjoyable! She is a health volunteer and lives in a Mandinka village so Pete and I tried our best to get at least one or two greetings down by the end of the day, but Wolof sounds so normal now and I just couldn’t make sense of Mandinka! Kirstin’s villagers make necklaces and bracelets out of big, red seeds that are plentiful in the region. We wanted to meet with some of the women to talk about the artisan network but they were out of town for a funeral. It was still great getting to the village, seeing such a different version of a Peace Corps service.
The way out of the village went well on our bikes, hot but a nice cool breeze, but then our bus got a flat tire after running out of gas, causing us to get back to Kolda after dark. The next morning I was outta there, and even that wasn’t as easy as the way there. PC has some weird agreement with the border patrol in the Gambia. Since we are volunteers, and residents of Senegal, we shouldn’t need to pay the 1,000cfa visa fee for passing through. All we need to show them is our PC identity and we should be fine. Well, I was kinda harassed by one guy, telling me that if anything happens to me in their country, and I didn’t have my passport signed, they wouldn’t know I was there. I wanted to just tell him, dude, you’re country is 40k wide, ease up. But they get rather defensive about that. Honestly, I had my idea checked 5 times! It sure is interesting though. This skinny little country, where instead of French, they speak English. It was fun. After that fiasco, we got a flat tire that took about an hour and then our driver stopped to help another car with a flat. What a great citizen right? Well, not exactly what we were thinking…
I got to Kaolack at 4 (8 hours of travel), tried to go to the bank but the ATM was Out of Order. So I went back to the house to spend the night but upon arriving I found out that the water was out. Happens more often that you would think! So since I was dirty and had nothing really I could do in Kaolack but wait for money (that probably won’t be available ‘til Monday), I decided to head for home. Not the most fun, but I made it by 8 or 8:30. Now I just need to stretch 3,000cfa through Monday.
I have some great ideas for the rest of my service and am trying real hard not to get discouraged. What if all that I have started in 2 years fails?!!!?! I found that my compost collection didn’t happen at all when I was gone, reason being that Djebaye’s religious leader is on his death bed and he can’t work until after the funeral. But my women’s group pres and I had a good chat and we made a plan of what we can do in the next few weeks. I will also be starting my tree nursery and planning 2 artisan meetings in March. My accounting meeting with Matar is today so we will see how he did the month of February and maybe even teach an English class about the Stimulus in America. These next few months are going to be an adventure for sure!
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Obstacles
Written the 19 of February...
The reason I haven’t written in a while is because my computer no longer connects to the internet. I hope I figure out a good way to still get photos up and keep in touch often but my computer is about 2x or 3x faster than computers at cybers so you just may have to wait to see the last 8 months of my service.
WAIST was so much fun this year. I know more people from Senegal and even a few from surrounding countries. I wore my mummy costume and black eye shadow! I was rather upset with our region since not many people dressed up. Some of my favorite Peace Corpses were the Dead Heads who even played the part of hippies with peaceful demonstrations on the field, and Etienne’s Worst Nightmare. Etienne is our Safety and Security Coordinator. They wore t-shirts that said, “went to bed with a cut on my foot and bled to death” and “adopted a cute puppy and died of rabies” and “went to Magal and died of Cholera”, etc. After our first game, I started telling everyone that if our pitcher didn’t find a costume before the next game I would pitch, completely ruining our chances of advancing to playoffs. It was meant to be a threat but in the end I pitched since we were ahead by so much. I’m not very good but only walked a few… we won 3 of our 4 games and then lost our playoff game to another PC Senegal team, who ended up getting third overall. PCV Mauritania Pirates won first place, which is much better than Senegal 1 winning. I mean, honestly, it’s an American sport! The Senegalese can’t win 2 years in a row!
Tuesday we had our All Volunteer Conference. It was a good chance to figure out who is doing what and how to work together more often, especially across sectors. I have still been talking to people about my idea of an Adopt-a-Tree project. I haven’t explained that yet, have I? Well, I have compost, and a fence! We still don’t have money collected from all the families, but that’s because Senegalese holidays are expensive and pretty much the only thing that people spend their money on rather than development projects. Not bitter, I swear…but I still need to go around door-to-door with the Chef de Quartier to get more people on board when it’s not a holiday around here. But my idea for selling the compost to get initial funds from my project is to plant trees in cooperation with the schools. Bambey is spread out along the route nationale but is deeper than it is longer. Kids cut across the “bush” to get to one of the middle schools and the high school. It’s a path cut through the desert with very few thorn trees that is seriously several degrees higher than the rest of town because of the lack of shade.
My idea is to go to the schools, sell one tree and some of our compost to one student or a pair of students. Then all together, we would go and plant these trees along this path together. The students would be responsible for their own fence and I would give prizes to those with the most creative, most effective, etc, as to motivate them. They would then be responsible for their tree to keep it watered and protected from goats until they are tall enough.
But my idea has hit a few road blocks. I went and talked with Eaux et Forets (Water and Forests) which is an organization that is funded to provide exactly what the name implies. I wanted advice on how to go about a tree nursery and he gave me the bad news. People don’t really like Neem trees, the kind I wanted to plant on this path, and that the trees take over a year to out-plant. Other trees can’t tolerate our salty tap water or don’t offer as much shade. So I think what I will do now is go to the middle schools and high school and do a survey on what the kids want and who would be willing to do this tree nursery, maybe for a year, at the school. But this doesn’t exactly sell my compost, which is the initial goal. So back to the drawing board. I am not giving up on this. I still want to plant lots of trees, work with the schools to teach about garbage separation and sell compost but I just need to get through the obstacle course that daily life is here in Senegal.
The reason I haven’t written in a while is because my computer no longer connects to the internet. I hope I figure out a good way to still get photos up and keep in touch often but my computer is about 2x or 3x faster than computers at cybers so you just may have to wait to see the last 8 months of my service.
WAIST was so much fun this year. I know more people from Senegal and even a few from surrounding countries. I wore my mummy costume and black eye shadow! I was rather upset with our region since not many people dressed up. Some of my favorite Peace Corpses were the Dead Heads who even played the part of hippies with peaceful demonstrations on the field, and Etienne’s Worst Nightmare. Etienne is our Safety and Security Coordinator. They wore t-shirts that said, “went to bed with a cut on my foot and bled to death” and “adopted a cute puppy and died of rabies” and “went to Magal and died of Cholera”, etc. After our first game, I started telling everyone that if our pitcher didn’t find a costume before the next game I would pitch, completely ruining our chances of advancing to playoffs. It was meant to be a threat but in the end I pitched since we were ahead by so much. I’m not very good but only walked a few… we won 3 of our 4 games and then lost our playoff game to another PC Senegal team, who ended up getting third overall. PCV Mauritania Pirates won first place, which is much better than Senegal 1 winning. I mean, honestly, it’s an American sport! The Senegalese can’t win 2 years in a row!
Tuesday we had our All Volunteer Conference. It was a good chance to figure out who is doing what and how to work together more often, especially across sectors. I have still been talking to people about my idea of an Adopt-a-Tree project. I haven’t explained that yet, have I? Well, I have compost, and a fence! We still don’t have money collected from all the families, but that’s because Senegalese holidays are expensive and pretty much the only thing that people spend their money on rather than development projects. Not bitter, I swear…but I still need to go around door-to-door with the Chef de Quartier to get more people on board when it’s not a holiday around here. But my idea for selling the compost to get initial funds from my project is to plant trees in cooperation with the schools. Bambey is spread out along the route nationale but is deeper than it is longer. Kids cut across the “bush” to get to one of the middle schools and the high school. It’s a path cut through the desert with very few thorn trees that is seriously several degrees higher than the rest of town because of the lack of shade.
My idea is to go to the schools, sell one tree and some of our compost to one student or a pair of students. Then all together, we would go and plant these trees along this path together. The students would be responsible for their own fence and I would give prizes to those with the most creative, most effective, etc, as to motivate them. They would then be responsible for their tree to keep it watered and protected from goats until they are tall enough.
But my idea has hit a few road blocks. I went and talked with Eaux et Forets (Water and Forests) which is an organization that is funded to provide exactly what the name implies. I wanted advice on how to go about a tree nursery and he gave me the bad news. People don’t really like Neem trees, the kind I wanted to plant on this path, and that the trees take over a year to out-plant. Other trees can’t tolerate our salty tap water or don’t offer as much shade. So I think what I will do now is go to the middle schools and high school and do a survey on what the kids want and who would be willing to do this tree nursery, maybe for a year, at the school. But this doesn’t exactly sell my compost, which is the initial goal. So back to the drawing board. I am not giving up on this. I still want to plant lots of trees, work with the schools to teach about garbage separation and sell compost but I just need to get through the obstacle course that daily life is here in Senegal.
Busy and Happy
Written the 12 of February
If every day was like today, I wouldn’t have a single complaint in Senegal. Well, maybe the heat, but it was easily escape-able in the shade of a tree! Yesterday and today have been my two most productive days, I think. And maybe the day before… let me start from the beginning.
After writing that last post, I started collecting money from houses that needed to pay for their poubelles (garbage can in French). Asking for money is a weird thing. Children do it all the time, even adults have been asking me for money, but it’s almost understood that they won’t get it. It’s worth a try I guess, since, we all know, white skin=money. Quick example, today when I asked Djebaye if he needed anything else to build a fence, he said, “Why yes, I need money so I can afford my pass to Touba for Magal”. Sorry dude. Anyways, we collected a few houses’ money and obviously don’t have enough for me to go back to Dakar and purchase more poubelles so I recommended to the group to build a fence so that we actually have compost, rather than simply centralizing the location of the pigs’ food.
After a long couple days of door-to-door greetings, sitting in houses, waiting for the money, I went to Dakar. Softball was a blast. We played the Dakar Academy (private school of toubabs) JV team. There were probably 20 chairs of cheering parents on one side and maybe 1 or 2 extras on our side. We let them win out of pity. You know, since we didn’t want all their work of practicing daily go to waste, along with their matching uniforms and cleats. I was barefoot. They were playing a bunch of hippy PCVs. So like I said, we let them win, otherwise who knows how upset they would have been!
Tuesday we did the waste sort in Mbour. It was a long day of bending over, an arm’s length from garbage, sorting everything in to piles to be weighed. We had a soda break at one-ish and lunch at 5. I got to talk technical with Curt which made the whole day worthwhile. I really hope I can duplicate, in a small way at least, the project. They admit they had everything going for them in order to make their project a success. We may arrange a meeting between our 2 mayor’s offices to see what collaboration is possible. My first step in that direction was my goal to meet with people of the mayor’s office Wednesday. I made a beautiful Power Point and was ready at 4, as we all planned. But only 1 guy showed up. Thank you for your support, mayor’s office... But since he is the Chef de Quartier (Chief of the Neighborhood), I wanted to fill him in anyways, and he was very interested in my project. Great! So next week he and I will go around door-to-door getting more people to give their advances so we can buy more poubelles. Although I still don’t have the support of my mayor’s office, I am moving right along.
I met with Djebaye yesterday and gave him money to buy “trees”. I guess that’s how we get enough branches to make a fence. 1 tree for 1,500cfa ($3). It doesn’t kill the tree, don’t worry, it just makes them shorter. So today we met out at the site and started fencing in the site. We worked all morning with the help of his and Astou Kan’s kids, invited the Chef and my counterpart even showed up by chance. I am very happy with how it is turning out. It’s about half done so I gave Djebaye another 3,000cfa to buy more trees and hopefully, cross your fingers, when I get back to site after WAIST, we will have a complete structure – PIG PROOF!!
So this weekend is WAIST and also Magal. Magal is the biggest pilgrimage in Senegal to Touba, about 60k east of Bambey. About 3 million people will be there Saturday. Thank goodness I will be in Dakar! It’s perfect timing since there will be nothing for me to do here in Bambey until Tuesday or Wednesday anyways. I am looking forward to the weekend at WAIST. At least 4 softball games, nearly all Senegal PCVs, and the PCVs from Mali, Mauritania, Gambia and Guinea will be there. Togo even had a team last year, not to mention all the other expats here. It will be a great time! As long as Erin and I have time to bake ourselves a cake! Her birthday is Monday.
Have a happy Valentine’s Day!
If every day was like today, I wouldn’t have a single complaint in Senegal. Well, maybe the heat, but it was easily escape-able in the shade of a tree! Yesterday and today have been my two most productive days, I think. And maybe the day before… let me start from the beginning.
After writing that last post, I started collecting money from houses that needed to pay for their poubelles (garbage can in French). Asking for money is a weird thing. Children do it all the time, even adults have been asking me for money, but it’s almost understood that they won’t get it. It’s worth a try I guess, since, we all know, white skin=money. Quick example, today when I asked Djebaye if he needed anything else to build a fence, he said, “Why yes, I need money so I can afford my pass to Touba for Magal”. Sorry dude. Anyways, we collected a few houses’ money and obviously don’t have enough for me to go back to Dakar and purchase more poubelles so I recommended to the group to build a fence so that we actually have compost, rather than simply centralizing the location of the pigs’ food.
After a long couple days of door-to-door greetings, sitting in houses, waiting for the money, I went to Dakar. Softball was a blast. We played the Dakar Academy (private school of toubabs) JV team. There were probably 20 chairs of cheering parents on one side and maybe 1 or 2 extras on our side. We let them win out of pity. You know, since we didn’t want all their work of practicing daily go to waste, along with their matching uniforms and cleats. I was barefoot. They were playing a bunch of hippy PCVs. So like I said, we let them win, otherwise who knows how upset they would have been!
Tuesday we did the waste sort in Mbour. It was a long day of bending over, an arm’s length from garbage, sorting everything in to piles to be weighed. We had a soda break at one-ish and lunch at 5. I got to talk technical with Curt which made the whole day worthwhile. I really hope I can duplicate, in a small way at least, the project. They admit they had everything going for them in order to make their project a success. We may arrange a meeting between our 2 mayor’s offices to see what collaboration is possible. My first step in that direction was my goal to meet with people of the mayor’s office Wednesday. I made a beautiful Power Point and was ready at 4, as we all planned. But only 1 guy showed up. Thank you for your support, mayor’s office... But since he is the Chef de Quartier (Chief of the Neighborhood), I wanted to fill him in anyways, and he was very interested in my project. Great! So next week he and I will go around door-to-door getting more people to give their advances so we can buy more poubelles. Although I still don’t have the support of my mayor’s office, I am moving right along.
I met with Djebaye yesterday and gave him money to buy “trees”. I guess that’s how we get enough branches to make a fence. 1 tree for 1,500cfa ($3). It doesn’t kill the tree, don’t worry, it just makes them shorter. So today we met out at the site and started fencing in the site. We worked all morning with the help of his and Astou Kan’s kids, invited the Chef and my counterpart even showed up by chance. I am very happy with how it is turning out. It’s about half done so I gave Djebaye another 3,000cfa to buy more trees and hopefully, cross your fingers, when I get back to site after WAIST, we will have a complete structure – PIG PROOF!!
So this weekend is WAIST and also Magal. Magal is the biggest pilgrimage in Senegal to Touba, about 60k east of Bambey. About 3 million people will be there Saturday. Thank goodness I will be in Dakar! It’s perfect timing since there will be nothing for me to do here in Bambey until Tuesday or Wednesday anyways. I am looking forward to the weekend at WAIST. At least 4 softball games, nearly all Senegal PCVs, and the PCVs from Mali, Mauritania, Gambia and Guinea will be there. Togo even had a team last year, not to mention all the other expats here. It will be a great time! As long as Erin and I have time to bake ourselves a cake! Her birthday is Monday.
Have a happy Valentine’s Day!
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Happy February!
It's February! When are we supposed to stop being excited for our birthdays? Is there some rule about this? ..... well I'm excited! :=)It's going to be fun month:
Softball playoffs are this Saturday. It's single elimination so it's pretty intense!
Next Tuesday I get to do a waste-sort! Hmmm, get to? Maybe that's a bad choice of words. The couple that organized the Joal Waste Management program is back visiting and helping extend the project to a few other cities. I get to go help them and at the same time study the technical side of composting.
West Africa Invitational Softball Tournment (WAIST) is next weekend. Our theme this year is Peace Corpse. I get to be dead! I have a pretty sweet costume that Matar made for me and I will have my camera in hand all weekend! It will be fun.
After WAIST weekend, we will have the All Volunteer Conference which gives us the opportunity to share stories and experiences.
Then my host sister and I are having a combined birthday party. Her bday is the 16th. Should be interesting... last year they had lots of food, cake, friends and even hired a photographer. I will have to invite toubab friends in order to keep sane. Maybe it will be fun!
Besides all the fun, I will be still working on my composting. I have a great new idea to do an adopt-a-tree project with our compost and to pair up with the schools. More details on that when I figure it all out. Matar is doing great with accounting and I'll be making it more difficult, but more precise for the month of February. We are having fun with it - the other day I walked into his shop and he was writing in his notebook and I just smiled. I like that kinda work.
Send some love to your valentine this month! <3
Softball playoffs are this Saturday. It's single elimination so it's pretty intense!
Next Tuesday I get to do a waste-sort! Hmmm, get to? Maybe that's a bad choice of words. The couple that organized the Joal Waste Management program is back visiting and helping extend the project to a few other cities. I get to go help them and at the same time study the technical side of composting.
West Africa Invitational Softball Tournment (WAIST) is next weekend. Our theme this year is Peace Corpse. I get to be dead! I have a pretty sweet costume that Matar made for me and I will have my camera in hand all weekend! It will be fun.
After WAIST weekend, we will have the All Volunteer Conference which gives us the opportunity to share stories and experiences.
Then my host sister and I are having a combined birthday party. Her bday is the 16th. Should be interesting... last year they had lots of food, cake, friends and even hired a photographer. I will have to invite toubab friends in order to keep sane. Maybe it will be fun!
Besides all the fun, I will be still working on my composting. I have a great new idea to do an adopt-a-tree project with our compost and to pair up with the schools. More details on that when I figure it all out. Matar is doing great with accounting and I'll be making it more difficult, but more precise for the month of February. We are having fun with it - the other day I walked into his shop and he was writing in his notebook and I just smiled. I like that kinda work.
Send some love to your valentine this month! <3
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